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GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 



BY JEFFERY FARNOL 



THE BROAD HIGHWAY 
THE AMATEUR GENTLEMAN 
THE HONOURABLE MR. TAWNISH 
BELTANE THE SMITH 
THE DEFINITE OBJECT 



GREAT BRITAIN 
AT WAR 



BY 



JEFFERY FARNOL 



n on-refer T 




pQlALVAD«a3S 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1918 



"> 



6^ 



Copyright, 1917, 

By the Ridgeway Co., in the United States and 
Great Britain. 

Copyright, 191J, 
By the Outlook Company. 

Copyright, 1917, 
The Tribune Association. 

Copyright, igi8, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reserved 
Published, March, 191 8 



MAR 30 1 8 II 



Norfoooo $«sb 

Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



©GU49277? 



ALL MY 
AMERICAN FRIENDS 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 
I 


Foreword . 








PAGE 
I 


II 


Cartridges . . . . 








6 


III 


Rifles and Lewis Guns 








12 


IV 


Clydebank . 








24 


V 


Ships in Making 








33 


VI 


The Battle Cruisers 








40 


VII 


A Hospital . 








58 


VIII 


The Guns ... 








69 


IX 


A Training Camp 








88 


X 


Arras .... 








103 


XI 


The Battlefields 








"5 


XII 


Flying Men 








125 


XIII 


Ypres .... 








144 


XIV 


What Britain Has Done . 








156 



vu 



GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 



FOREWORD 

In publishing these collected articles in 
book form (the result of my visits to Flan- 
ders, the battlefields of France and divers 
of the great munition centres), some of 
which have already appeared in the press 
both in England and America, I do so with 
a certain amount of diffidence, because of 
their so many imperfections and of their 
inadequacy of expression. But what man, 
especially in these days, may hope to treat 
a theme so vast, a tragedy so awful, without 
a sure knowledge that all he can say must 
fall so infinitely far below the daily hap- 
penings which are, on the one hand, raising 
Humanity to a godlike altitude or depress- 
ing it lower than the brutes. But, be- 



2 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

cause these articles are a simple record of 
what I have seen and what I have heard, 
they may perhaps be of use in bringing out 
of the shadow — that awful shadow of 
"usualness" into which they have fallen — 
many incidents that would, before the 
war, have roused the world to wonder, to 
pity and to infinite awe. 

Since the greater number of these articles 
was written, America has thrown her might 
into the scale against merciless Barbarism 
and Autocracy ; at her entry into the drama 
there was joy in English and French hearts, 
but, I venture to think, a much greater 
joy in the hearts of all true Americans. 
I happened to be in Paris on the memorable 
day America declared war, and I shall never 
forget the deep-souled enthusiasm of the 
many Americans it was my privilege to 
know there. America, the greatest de- 
mocracy in the world, had at last taken her 
stand on the side of Freedom, Justice and 
Humanity. 

As an Englishman, I love and am proud 
of my country, and, in the years I spent in 



FOREWORD 3 

America, I saw with pain and deep regret 
the misunderstanding that existed between 
these two great nations. In America I 
beheld a people young, ardent, indomitable, 
full of the unconquerable spirit of Youth, 
and I thought of that older country across 
the seas, so little understanding and so 
little understood. 

And often I thought if it were only pos- 
sible to work a miracle, if it were only 
possible for the mists of jealousy and ill- 
feeling, or rivalry and misconception to be 
swept away once and for all — if only 
these two great nations could be bonded 
together by a common ideal, heart to heart 
and hand to hand, for the good of Hu- 
manity, what earthly power should ever 
be able to withstand their united strength. 
In my soul I knew that the false teaching 
of history — that great obstacle to the 
progress of the world — was one of the 
underlying causes of the misunderstanding, 
but it was an American Ambassador who 
put this into words. If, said he, America 
did not understand the aims and hopes of 



4 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

Great Britain, it was due to the textbooks of 
history used in American schools. 

To-day, America, through her fighting 
youth and manhood, will see Englishmen 
as they are, and not as they have been rep- 
resented. Surely the time has come when 
we should try and appreciate each other at 
our true worth. 

These are tragic times, sorrowful times, 
yet great and noble times, for these are 
days of fiery ordeal whereby mean and 
petty things are forgotten and the dross 
of unworthy things burned away. To- 
day the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples 
stand united in a noble comradeship for 
the good of the world and for those gen- 
erations that are yet to be, a comradeship 
which I, for one, do most sincerely hope 
and pray may develop into a veritable 
brotherhood. One in blood are we, in 
speech, and in ideals, and though sundered 
by generations of misunderstanding and 
false teaching, to-day we stand, brothers- 
in-arms, fronting the brute for the freedom 
of Humanity. 



FOREWORD 5 

Americans will die as Britons have died 
for this noble cause; Americans will bleed 
as Britons have bled ; American women 
will mourn as British women have mourned 
these last terrible years ; yet, in these 
deaths, in this noble blood, in these tears 
of agony and bereavement, surely the 
souls of these two great nations will draw 
near, each to each, and understand at last. 

Here in a word is the fulfilment of the 
dream ; that, by the united effort, by the 
blood, by the suffering, by the heartbreak 
endured of these two great English-speaking 
races, wars shall be made to cease in all 
the world ; that peace and happiness, 
truth and justice shall be established among 
us for all generations, and that the united 
powers of the Anglo-Saxon races shall be a 
bulwark behind which Mankind may hence- 
forth rest secure. . l 

Now, in the name of Humanity, I ap- 
peal to American and to Briton to work 
for, strive, think and pray for this great 
and glorious consummation. 



II 

CARTRIDGES 

At an uncomfortable hour I arrived at 
a certain bleak railway platform and in 
due season, stepping into a train, was 
whirled away northwards. And as I jour- 
neyed, hearkening to the talk of my com- 
panions, men much travelled and of many 
nationalities, my mind was agog for the 
marvels and wonders I was to see in the 
workshops of Great Britain. Marvels and 
wonders I was prepared for, and yet for 
once how far short of fact were all my 
fancies ! 

Britain has done great things in the past ; 
she will, I pray, do even greater in the 
future; but surely never have mortal eyes 
looked on an effort so stupendous and de- 
termined as she is sustaining, and will 
sustain, until this most bloody of wars 
is ended. 

6 



CARTRIDGES 7 

The deathless glory of our troops, their 
blood and agony and scorn of death have 
been made pegs on which to hang much 
indifferent writing and more bad verse — 
there have been letters also, sheaves of 
them, in many of which effusions one may 
discover a wondering surprise that our 
men can actually and really fight, that 
Britain is still the Britain of Drake and 
Frobisher and Grenville, of Nelson and 
Blake and Cochrane, and that the same 
deathless spirit of heroic determination 
animates her still. 

To-night, as I pen these lines, our armies 
are locked in desperate battle, our guns are 
thundering on many fronts, but like an 
echo to their roar, from mile upon mile of 
workshops and factories and shipyards is 
rising the answering roar of machinery, 
the thunderous crash of titanic hammers, 
the hellish rattle of riveters, the whining, 
droning, shrieking of a myriad wheels 
where another vast army is engaged night 
and day, as indomitable, as fierce of purpose 
as the army beyond the narrow seas. 



8 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

I have beheld miles of workshops that 
stand where grass grew two short years 
ago, wherein are bright-eyed English girls, 
Irish colleens and Scots lassies by the ten 
thousand, whose dexterous ringers flash 
nimbly to and fro, slender fingers, yet fin- 
gers contriving death. I have wandered 
through a wilderness of whirring driving- 
belts and humming wheels where men and 
women, with the same feverish activity, 
bend above machines whose very hum 
sang to me of death, while I have watched 
a cartridge grow from a disc of metal to 
the hellish contrivance it is. 

And as I watched the busy scene it 
seemed an unnatural and awful thing that 
women's hands should be busied thus, 
fashioning means for the maiming and de- 
struction of life — until, in a remote corner, 
I paused to watch a woman whose dexterous 
fingers were fitting finished cartridges into 
clips with wonderful celerity. A middle- 
aged woman, this, tall and white-haired, 
who, at my remark, looked up with a bright 
smile, but with eyes sombre and weary. 



CARTRIDGES 9° 

"Yes, sir," she answered above the roar 
of machinery, "I had two boys at the 
front, but — they're a-laying out there 
somewhere, killed by the same shell. I've 
got a photo of their graves — very neat 
they look, though bare, and I'll never be 
able to go and tend 'em, y'see — nor lay 
a few flowers on 'em. So I'm doin' this 
instead — to help the other lads. Yes, 
sir, my boys did their bit, and now they're 
gone their mother's tryin' to do hers." 

Thus I stood and talked with this sad- 
eyed, white-haired woman who had cast 
off selfish grief to aid the Empire, and in 
her I saluted the spirit of noble mother- 
hood ere I turned and went my way. 

But now I woke to the fact that my 
companions had vanished utterly; lost, 
but nothing abashed, I rambled on between 
long alleys of clattering machines, which 
in their many functions seemed in them- 
selves almost human, pausing now and 
then to watch and wonder and exchange a 
word with one or other of the many workers, 
until a kindly works-manager found me 



8 io GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

and led me unerringly through that riotous 
jungle of machinery. 

He brought me by devious ways to a 
place he called "holy ground" — long, low 
outbuildings approached by narrow, wooden 
causeways, swept and re-swept by men 
shod in felt — a place this, where no dust 
or grit might be, for here was the maga- 
zine, with the filling sheds beyond. And 
within these long sheds, each seated be- 
hind a screen, were women who handled 
and cut deadly cordite into needful lengths 
as if it had been so much ribbon, and al- 
ways and everywhere the same dexterous 
speed. 

He led me, this soft-voiced, keen-eyed 
works-manager, through well-fitted wards 
and dispensaries, redolent of clean, druggy 
smells and the pervading odour of iodo- 
form; he ushered me through dining halls 
long and wide and lofty and lighted by 
many windows, where countless dinners 
were served at a trifling cost per head ; 
and so at last out upon a pleasant green, 
beyond which rose the great gates where 



CARTRIDGES n 

stood the cars that were to bear my com- 
panions and myself upon our way. 

"They seem to work very hard!" said 
I, turning to glance back whence we had 
come, "they seem very much in earnest." 

"Yes," said my companion, "every week 
we are turning out — " here he named very 
many millions — "of cartridges." 

"To be sure they are earning good 
money!" said I thoughtfully. 

"More than many of them ever dreamed 
of earning," answered the works-manager. 
"And yet — I don't know, but I don't 
think it is altogether the money, somehow." 

" I'm glad to hear you say that — very 
glad!" said I, "because it is a great thing 
to feel that they are working for the Britain 
that is, and is to be." 



Ill 

RIFLES AND LEWIS GUNS 

A drive through a stately street where 
were shops which might rival Bond Street, 
the Rue de la Paix, or Fifth Avenue for 
the richness and variety of their con- 
tents ; a street whose pavements were 
thronged with well-dressed pedestrians and 
whose roadway was filled with motor cars 
— vehicles, these, scornful of the petrol 
tax and such-like mundane and vulgar 
restrictions — in fine, the street of a rich 
and thriving city. 

But suddenly the stately thoroughfare 
had given place to a meaner street, its 
princely shops had degenerated into blank 
walls or grimy yards, on either hand rose 
tall chimney stacks belching smoke; in- 
stead of dashing motor cars, heavy wains 



RIFLES AND LEWIS GUNS 13 

and cumbrous wagons jogged by; in place 
of the well-dressed throng were figures 
rough-clad and grimy that hurried along 
the narrow sidewalks — but these rough- 
clad people walked fast and purposefully. 
So we hummed along streets wide or nar- 
row but always grimy, until we were halted 
at a tall barrier by divers policemen, who, 
having inspected our credentials, per- 
mitted us to pass on to the factory, or 
series of factories, that stretched them- 
selves before us, building on building — 
block on block — a very town. 
' Here we were introduced to various man- 
agers and heads of departments, among 
whom was one in the uniform of a Captain 
of Engineers, under whose capable wing 
I had the good fortune to come, for he, it 
seemed, had lived among engines and 
machinery, had thought out and contrived 
lethal weapons from his youth up, and 
therewith retained so kindly and genial a 
personality as drew me irresistibly. Where- 
fore I gave myself to his guidance, and he, 
chatting of books and literature and the 



14 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

like trivialities, led me along corridors 
and passage-ways to see the wonder of 
the guns. And as we went, in the air 
about us was a stir, a hum that grew and 
ever grew, until, passing a massive swing 
door, there burst upon us a rumble, a roar, 
a clashing din. 

We stood in a place of gloom lit by many 
fires, a vast place whose roof was hid by 
blue vapour; all about us rose the dim 
forms of huge stamps, whose thunderous 
stroke beat out a deep diapason to the ring 
of countless hand-hammers. And, lighted 
by the sudden glare of furnace fires were 
figures, bare-armed, smoke-grimed, wild of 
aspect, figures that whirled heavy sledges 
or worked the levers of the giant steam- 
hammers, while here and there bars of 
iron new-glowing from the furnace winked 
and twinkled in the gloom where those wild, 
half-naked men-shapes flitted to and fro un- 
heard amid the thunderous din. Awed and 
half stunned, I stood viewing that never- 
to-be-forgotten scene until I grew aware 
that the Captain was roaring in my ear. 



* RIFLES AND LEWIS GUNS 15 

"Forge . . . rifle barrels . . . come and 
see and mind where you tread!" 

Treading as seemingly silent as those 
wild human shapes, that straightened 
brawny backs to view me as I passed, that 
grinned in the fire-glow and spoke one to 
another, words lost to my stunned hear- 
ing, ere they bent to their labour again, 
obediently I followed the Captain's dim 
form until I was come where, bare-armed, 
leathern-aproned and be-spectacled, stood 
one who seemed of some account among 
these salamanders, who, nodding to certain 
words addressed to him by the Captain, 
seized a pair of tongs, swung open a furnace 
door, and plucking thence a glowing 
brand, whirled it with practised ease, and 
setting it upon the dies beneath a huge 
steam-hammer, nodded his head. In- 
stantly that mighty engine fell to work, 
thumping and banging with mighty strokes, 
and with each stroke that glowing steel 
bar changed and changed, grew round, 
grew thin, hunched a shoulder here, showed 
a flat there, until, lo ! before my eyes was 



16 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

the shape of a rifle minus the stock ! Here- 
upon the be-spectacled salamander nodded 
again, the giant hammer became immedi- 
ately immobile, the glowing forging was 
set among hundreds of others and a voice 
roared in my ear : 

"Two minutes . . . this way." 

A door opens, closes, and we are in sun- 
shine again, and the Captain is smilingly 
reminiscent of books. 

"This is greater than books," said I. 

"Why, that depends," says he, "there 
are books and books . . . this way!" 

Up a flight of stairs, through a doorway, 
and I am in a shop where huge machines 
grow small in perspective. And here I 
see the rough forging pass through the many 
stages of trimming, milling, turning, bor- 
ing, rifling until comes the assembling, and 
I take up the finished rifle ready for its 
final process — testing. So downstairs we 
go to the testing sheds, wherefrom as we 
approach comes the sound of dire battle, 
continuous reports, now in volleys, now in 
single sniping shots, or in rapid succession. 



RIFLES AND LEWIS GUNS 17 

Inside, I breathe an air charged with 
burnt powder and behold in a long row, 
many rifles mounted upon crutches, their 
muzzles levelled at so many targets. Be- 
side each rifle stand two men, one to sight 
and correct, and one to fire and watch 
the effect of the shot by means of a tele- 
scope fixed to hand. 

With the nearest of these men I incon- 
tinent fell into talk — a chatty fellow this, 
who, busied with pliers adjusting the back- 
sight of a rifle, talked to me of lines of 
sight and angles of deflection, his remarks 
sharply punctuated by rifle-shots, that 
came now slowly, now in twos and threes 
and now in rapid volleys. 

"Yes, sir," said he, busy pliers never 
still, "guns and rifles is very like us — you 
and me, say. Some is just naturally good 
and some is worse than bad — load up, 
George ! A new rifle's like a kid — pretty 
sure to fire a bit wide at first — not being 
used to it — we was all kids once, sir, 
remember ! But a bit of correction here 
an' there'll put that right as a rule. On 



1 8 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

the other hand there's rifles as Old Nick 
himself nor nobody else could make shoot 
straight — ready, George ? And it's just 
the same with kids ! Now, if you'll stick 
your eyes to that glass, and watch the 
target, you'll see how near she'll come this 
time — all right, George!" As he speaks 
the rifle speaks also, and observing the 
hit on the target, I sing out : 

"Three o'clock!" 

Ensues more work with the pliers ; 
George loads and fires and with one eye still 
at the telescope I give him : 

"Five o'clock!" 

Another moment of adjusting, again the 
rifle cracks and this time I announce : 

"A bull!" 

Hereupon my companion squints through 
the glass and nods: "Right-oh, George!" 
says he, then, while George the silent 
stacks the tested rifle with many others, 
he turns to me and nods, "Got 'im that 
time, sir — pity it weren't a bloomin' 
Hun!" 

Here the patient Captain suggests we 



RIFLES AND LEWIS GUNS 19 

had better go, and unwillingly I follow 
him out into the open and the sounds of 
battle die away behind us. 

And now, as we walked, I learned some 
particulars of that terrible device the Lewis 
gun ; how that it could spout bullets at the 
rate of six hundred per minute; how, by 
varying pressures of the trigger, it could be 
fired by single rounds or pour forth its en- 
tire magazine in a continuous, shattering 
volley and how it weighed no more than 
twenty-six pounds. 

"And here," said the Captain, opening 
a door and speaking in his pleasant voice, 
much as though he were showing me some 
rare flowers, "here is where they grow by 
the hundred, every week." 

And truly in hundreds they were, long 
rows of them standing very neatly in 
racks, their walnut stocks heel by heel, 
their grim, blue muzzles in long, serried 
ranks, very orderly and precise ; and some- 
thing in their very orderliness endowed 
them with a certain individuality as it 
were. It almost seemed to me that they 



20 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

were waiting, mustered and ready, for that 
hour of ferocious roar and tumult when 
their voice should be the voice of swift 
and terrible death. Now as I gazed upon 
them, filled with these scarcely definable 
thoughts, I was startled by a sudden shat- 
tering crash near by, a sound made up of 
many individual reports, and swinging 
about, I espied a man seated upon a stool ; 
a plump, middle-aged, family sort of man, 
who sat upon his low stool, his aproned 
knees set wide, as plump, middle-aged 
family men often do. As I watched, 
Paterfamilias squinted along the sights of 
one of these guns and once again came that 
shivering crash that is like nothing else 
I ever heard. Him I approached and 
humbly ventured an awed question or so, 
whereon he graciously beckoned me nearer, 
vacated his stool, and motioning me to sit 
there, suggested I might try a shot at the 
target, a far disc lighted by shaded electric 
bulbs. 

"She's fixed dead on!" he said, "and 
she's true — you can't miss. A quick 



RIFLES AND LEWIS GUNS 21 

pull for single shots and a steady pressure 
for a volley." 

Hereupon I pressed the trigger, the gun 
stirred gently in its clamps, the air 
throbbed, and a stream of ten bullets 
(the testing number) plunged into the 
bull's-eye and all in the space of a mo- 
ment. 

"There ain't a un'oly 'un of 'em all 
could say 'Hoch the Kaiser' with them in 
his stomach," said Paterfamilias thought- 
fully, laying a hand upon the respectable 
stomach beneath his apron, "it's a gun, 
that is !" And a gun it most assuredly is. 

I would have tarried longer with Pater- 
familias, for in his own way, he was as 
arresting as this terrible weapon — or nearly 
so — but the Captain, gentle-voiced and 
serene as ever, suggested that my com- 
panions had a train to catch, wherefore I 
reluctantly turned away. But as I went, 
needs must I glance back at Paterfamilias, 
as comfortable as ever where he sat, but 
with pudgy fingers on trigger grimly at 
work again, and from him] to the long, 



22 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

orderly rows of guns mustered in their 
orderly ranks, awaiting their hour. 

We walked through shops where belts 
and pulleys and wheels and cogs napped 
and whirled and ground in ceaseless con- 
cert, shops where files rasped and hammers 
rang, shops again where all seemed riot 
and confusion at the first glance, but at a 
second showed itself ordered confusion, as 
it were. And as we went, my Captain spoke 
of the hospital bay, of wards and dispen- 
sary (lately enlarged), of sister and nurses 
and the grand work they were doing 
among the employees other than attend- 
ing to their bodily ills ; and talking thus, 
he brought me to the place, a place of 
exquisite order and tidiness, yet where 
nurses, blue-uniformed, in their white caps, 
cuff's and aprons, seemed to me the neatest 
of all. And here I was introduced to Sis- 
ter, capable, strong, gentle-eyed, who told 
me something of her work — how many 
came to her with wounds of soul as well as 
body ; of griefs endured and wrongs suf- 
fered by reason of pitiful lack of knowledge ; 



RIFLES AND LEWIS GUNS 23 

of how she was teaching them care and 
cleanliness of minds as well as bodies, 
which is surely the most blessed heritage 
the unborn generations may inherit. She 
told me of the patient bravery of the 
women, the chivalry of grimy men, whose 
hurts may wait that others may be treated 
first. So she talked and I listened until, 
perceiving the Captain somewhat osten- 
tatiously consulting his watch, I presently 
left that quiet haven with its soft-treading 
ministering attendants. 

So we had tea and cigarettes, and when 
I eventually shook hands with my Cap- 
tain, I felt that I was parting with a friend. 

"And what struck you most particularly 
this afternoon?" enquired one of my com- 
panions. 

"Well," said I, "it was either the Lewis 
gun or Paterfamilias the grim." 



IV 

CLYDEBANK 

Henceforth the word "Clydebank" 
will be associated in my mind with the 
ceaseless ring and din of riveting-hammers, 
where, day by day, hour by hour, a new 
fleet is growing, destroyers and torpedo 
boats alongside monstrous submarines — 
yonder looms the grim bulk of Super-dread- 
nought or battle cruiser or the slender 
shape of some huge liner. 

And with these vast shapes about me, 
what wonder that I stood awed and silent 
at the stupendous sight. But, to my 
companion, a shortish, thick-set man, with 
a masterful air and a bowler hat very much 
over one eye, these marvels were an every- 
day affair; and now, ducking under a 
steel hawser, he led me on, dodging moving 

24 



CLYDEBANK 25 

trucks, stepping unconcernedly across the 
buffers of puffing engines, past titanic 
cranes that swung giant arms high in the 
air; on we went, stepping over chain 
cables, wire ropes, pulley-blocks and a 
thousand and one other obstructions, on 
which I stumbled occasionally since my 
awed gaze was turned upwards. And as 
we walked amid these awsome shapes, he 
talked, I remember, of such futile things 
as — books. 

I beheld great ships well-nigh ready for 
launching; I stared up at huge structures 
towering aloft, a wild complexity of steel 
joists and girders, yet, in whose seeming 
confusion, the eye could detect something 
of the mighty shape of the leviathan that 
was to be ; even as I looked, six feet or so 
of steel plating swung through the air, 
sank into place, and immediately I was 
deafened by the hellish racket of the rivet- 
ing-hammers. 

"... nothing like a good book and a 
pipe to go with it!" said my companion 
between two bursts of hammering. 



26 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

"This is a huge ship!" said I, staring 
upward still. 

"H'm — fairish!" nodded my com- 
panion, scratching his square jaw and 
letting his knowledgeful eyes rove to and 
fro over the vast bulk that loomed above 
us. 

"Have you built them much bigger, 
then?" I enquired. 

My companion nodded and proceeded 
to tell me certain amazing facts which 
the riotous riveting-hammers promptly 
censored in the following remarkable 
fashion. 

"You should have seen the rat-tat-tat. 
We built her in exactly nineteen months 
instead of two years and a half ! Biggest 
battleship afloat — two hundred feet longer 
than the rat-tat-tat — launched her last 
rat-tat-tat — gone to rat-tat-tat-tat for her 
guns." 

"What size guns?" I shouted above the 
hammers. 

"Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-inch!" he said, 
smiling grimly. 



CLYDEBANK 27 

"How much?" I yelled. 

"She has four rat-tat-tat-tat inch and 
twelve rattle-tattle inch besides rat-tat-tat- 
tat!" he answered, nodding. 

"Really!" I roared, "if those guns are 
half as big as I think, the Germans — " 

"The Germans — !" said he, and blew 
his nose. 

"How long did you say she was?" I 
hastened to ask as the hammers died down 
a little. 

"Well, over all she measured exactly 
rat-tat feet. She was so big that we had 
to pull down a corner of the building there, 
as you can see." 

"And what's her name ?" 

"The rat-tat-tat, and she's the rattle- 
tattle of her class." 

"Are these hammers always quite so 
noisy, do you suppose ?" I enquired, a little 
hopelessly. 

"Oh, off and on!" he nodded. "Kick 
up a bit of a racket, don't they, but you 
get used to it in time ; I could hear a pin 
drop. Look ! since we've stood here 



28 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

they've got four more plates fixed — there 
goes the fifth. This way!" 

Past the towering bows of future battle- 
ships he led me, over and under more steel 
cables, until he paused to point towards 
an empty slip near by. 

"That's where we built the Lusitania!" 
said he. "We thought she was pretty big 
then — but now — !" he settled his hat a 
little further over one eye with a knock 
on the crown. 

"Poor old Lusitania!" said I, "she'll 
never be forgotten." 

"Not while ships sail!" he answered, 
squaring his square jaw, "no, she'll never 
be forgotten, nor the murderers who ended 
her!" 

"And they've struck a medal in com- 
memoration," said I. 

"Medal!" said he, and blew his nose 
louder than before. "I fancy they'll wish 
they could swallow that damn medal, one 
day. Poor old Lusitania! You lose any 
one aboard ?" 

"I had some American friends aboard, 



CLYDEBANK 29 

but they escaped, thank God — others 
weren't so fortunate." 

"No," he answered, turning away, "but 
America got quite angry — wrote a note, 
remember ? Over there's one of the latest 
submarines. Germany can't touch her for 
speed and size, and better than that, she's 
got rat-tat — " 

"I beg pardon?" I wailed, for the ham- 
mers were riotous again, "what has she?" 

"She's got rat-tat forward and rat-tat 
aft, surface speed rat-tat-tat knots, sub- 
merged rat-tat-tat, and then best of all 
she's rattle-tattle-tattle. Yes, hammers are 
a bit noisy ! This way. A destroyer yon- 
der — new class — rat-tat feet longer than 
ordinary. We expect her to do rat-tat-tat 
knots and she'll mount rat-tat guns. There 
are two of them in the basin yonder having 
their engines fitted, turbines to give rat- 
tat-tat horse power. But come on, we'd 
better be going or we shall lose the others 
of your party." 

"I should like to stay here a week," 
said I, tripping over a steel hawser. 



30 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

"Say a month," he added, steadying me 
deftly. "You might begin to see all we've 
been doing in a month. We've built 
twenty-nine ships of different classes since 
the war began in this one yard, and we're 
going on building till the war's over — and 
after that too. And this place is only one 
of many. Which reminds me you're to 
go to another yard this afternoon — we'd 
better hurry after the rest of your party or 
they'll be waiting for you." 

"I'm afraid they generally are !" I sighed, 
as I turned and followed my conductor 
through yawning doorways (built to admit 
a giant, it seemed) into vast workshops 
whose lofty roofs were lost in haze. Here 
I saw huge turbines and engines of mon- 
strous shape in course of construction ; 
I beheld mighty propellers, with boilers 
and furnaces big as houses, whose propor- 
tions were eloquent of the colossal ships 
that were to be. But here indeed, all 
things were on a gigantic scale ; ponderous 
lathes were turning, mighty planing ma- 
chines swung unceasing back and forth, 



CLYDEBANK 31 

while other monsters bored and cut through 
steel plate as it had been so much card- 
board. 

"Good machines, these!" said my com- 
panion, patting one of these monsters with 
familiar hand, "all made in Britain!" 

"Like the men!" I suggested. 

"The men," said he. "Humph! They 
haven't been giving much trouble lately 
— touch wood !" 

"Perhaps they know Britain just now 
needs every man that is a man," I sug- 
gested, "and some one has said that a man 
can fight as hard at home here with a ham- 
mer as in France with a rifle." 

"Well, there's a lot of fighting going on 
here," nodded my companion, "we're fight- 
ing night and day and we're fighting damned 
hard. And now we'd better hurry; your 
party will be cursing you in chorus." 

"I'm afraid it has before now!" said I. 

So we hurried on, past shops whence 
came the roar of machinery, past great 
basins wherein floated destroyers and tor- 
pedo boats, past craft of many kinds and 



32 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

fashions, ships built and building; on I 
hastened, tripping over more cables, dodg- 
ing from the buffers of snorting engines and 
deafened again by the fearsome din of the 
riveting-hammers, until I found my travel- 
ling companions assembled and ready to 
depart. Scrambling hastily into the near- 
est motor car I shook hands with this 
shortish, broad-shouldered, square-jawed 
man and bared my head, for, so far as these 
great works were concerned, he was in very 
truth a superman. Thus I left him to 
oversee the building of these mighty ships, 
which have been and will ever be the might 
of these small islands. 

But, even as I went speeding through 
dark streets, in my ears, rising high above 
the hum of our engine was the unceasing 
din, the remorseless ring and clash of the 
riveting-hammers. 



V 
SHIPS IN MAKING 

Build me straight, O worthy Master ! 

Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, 
That shall laugh at all disaster 

And with wave and whirlwind wrestle ! 

— Longfellow. 

He was an old man with that indefinable 
courtliness of bearing that is of a past 
generation ; tall and spare he was, his 
white head bowed a little by weight of 
years, but almost with my first glance I 
seemed to recognise him instinctively for 
that "worthy Master Builder of goodly 
vessels staunch and strong !" So the Mas- 
ter Builder I will call him. 

He stood beside me at the window with 
one in the uniform of a naval captain, and 
we looked, all three of us, at that which 
few might behold unmoved. 

33 



34 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

"She's a beauty!" said the Captain. 
"She's all speed and grace from cutwater to 
sternpost." 

"I've been building ships for sixty-odd 
years and we never launched a better!" 
said the Master Builder. 

As for me I was dumb. 

She lay within a stone's throw, a mighty 
vessel, huge of beam and length, her super- 
structure towering proudly aloft, her 
massive armoured sides sweeping up in 
noble curves, a Super-Dreadnought com- 
plete from trucks to keelson. Yacht-like 
she sat the water all buoyant grace from 
lofty prow to tapering counter, and to me 
there was something sublime in the grim 
and latent power, the strength and beauty 
of her. 

"But she's not so very — big, is she?" 
enquired a voice behind me. 

The Captain stared ; the Master Builder 
smiled. 

"Fairly!" he nodded. "Why do you 
ask?" 

"Well, I usually reckon the size of a 



SHIPS IN MAKING 35 

ship from the number of her funnels, 
and—" 

"Ha !" exclaimed the Captain explosively. 

"Humph!" said the Master Builder 
gently. "After luncheon you shall meas- 
ure her if you like, but now I think we 
will go and eat." 

During a most excellent luncheon the 
talk ranged from ships and books and guns 
to submarines and seaplanes, with stories 
of battle and sudden death, tales of risk 
and hardship, of noble courage and heroic 
deeds, so that I almost forgot to eat and 
was sorry when at last we rose from table. 

Once outside I had the good fortune to 
find myself between the Captain and the 
venerable figure of the Master Builder, in 
whose company I spent a never-to-be- 
forgotten afternoon. With them I stood 
alongside this noble ship which, seen thus 
near, seemed mightier than ever. 

"Will she be fast?" I enquired. 

"Very fast — for a Dreadnought!" said 
the Captain. 

"And at top speed she'll show no bow 



36 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

wave to speak of," added the veteran. 
"See how fine her lines are fore and aft." 

"And her gun power will be enormous !" 
said the Captain. 

Hard by I espied a solitary being, who 
stood, chin in hand, lost in contemplation 
of this large vessel. 

"Funnels or not, she's bigger than you 
thought?" I enquired of him. 

He glanced at me, shook his head, 
sighed, and took himself by the chin again. 

"Holy smoke!" said he. 

"And you have been building ships for 
sixty years?" I asked of the venerable 
figure beside me. 

"And more!" he answered; "and my 
father built ships hereabouts so long ago 
as 1820, and his grandfather before him." 

"Back to the times of Nelson and Rod- 
ney and Anson," said I, "great seamen all, 
who fought great ships ! What would they 
think of this one, I wonder ?" 

"That she was a worthy successor," 
replied the Master Builder, letting his 
eyes, so old and wise in ships, wander up 



SHIPS IN MAKING 37 

and over the mighty fabric before us. 
"Yes," he nodded decisively, "she's worthy 
— like the men who will fight her one of 
these days." 

"But our enemies and some of our friends 
rather thought we had degenerated these 
latter days," I suggested. 

"Ah, well!" said he very quietly, "they 
know better now, don't you think?" 

"Yes," said I, and again, "Yes." 

"Slow starters always," continued he 
musingly; "but the nation that can match 
us in staying power has yet to be born!" 

So walking between these two I listened 
and looked and asked questions, and of 
what I heard, and of what I saw I could 
write much ; but for the censor I might 
tell of armour-belts of enormous thickness, 
of guns of stupendous calibre, of new 
methods of defence against sneaking sub- 
marine and torpedo attack, and of devices 
new and strange ; but of these I may neither 
write nor speak, because of the aforesaid 
censor. Suffice it that as the sun sank, 
we came, all three, to a jetty whereto a 



38 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

steamboat lay moored, on whose limited 
deck were numerous figures, divers of whom 
beckoned me on. 

So with hearty farewells, I stepped aboard 
the steamboat, whereupon she snorted and 
fell suddenly a-quiver as she nosed out 
into the broad stream while I stood to wave 
my hat in farewell. 

Side by side they stood, the Captain tall 
and broad and sailor-like in his blue and 
gold — a man of action, bold of eye, hearty 
of voice, free of gesture ; the other, his 
silver hair agleam in the setting sun, a 
man wise with years, gentle and calm-eyed, 
my Master Builder. Thus, as the distance 
lengthened, I stood watching until presently 
they turned, side by side, and so were gone. 

Slowly we steamed down the river, a drab, 
unlovely waterway, but a wonderful river 
none the less, whose banks teem with 
workers where ships are building — ships 
by the mile, by the league ; ships of all 
shapes and of all sizes, ships of all sorts 
and for many different purposes. Here 
are great cargo boats growing hour by hour 



SHIPS IN MAKING 39 

with liners great and small ; here I saw 
mile on mile of battleships, cruisers, de- 
stroyers and submarines of strange design 
with torpedo boats of uncanny shape ; 
tramp steamers, windjammers, squat col- 
liers and squatter tugs, these last surely 
the ugliest craft that ever wallowed in 
water. Mine layers were here with mine 
sweepers and hospital ships — a hetero- 
geneous collection of well-nigh every kind 
of ship that floats. 

Some lay finished and ready for launch- 
ing, others, just begun, were only a sketch 
— a hint of what soon would be a ship. 

On our right were ships, on our left were 
ships and more ships, a long perspective ; 
ships by the million tons — until my eyes 
grew a-weary of ships and I went below. 

Truly a wonderful river, this, surely in 
its way the most wonderful river eyes may 
see, a sight I shall never forget, a sight I 
shall always associate with the stalwart 
figure of the Captain and the white hair 
and venerable form of the Master Builder 
as they stood side by side to wave adieu. 



VI 

THE BATTLE CRUISERS 

Beneath the shadow of a mighty bridge 
I stepped into a very smart launch manned 
by sailors in overalls somewhat grimy, 
and, rising and falling to the surge of the 
broad river, we held away for a destroyer 
that lay grey and phantom-like, low, rakish, 
and with speed in every line of her. As 
we drew near, her narrow deck looked to 
my untutored eye a confused litter of 
guns, torpedo tubes, guy ropes, cables and 
windlasses. Howbeit, I clambered aboard, 
and ducking under a guy rope and avoid- 
ing sundry other obstructions, shook hands 
with her commander, young, clear-eyed 
and cheery of mien, who presently led 
me past a stumpy smokestack and up a 
perpendicular ladder to the bridge where, 

40 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 41 

beneath a somewhat flimsy-looking struc- 
ture, was the wheel, brass-bound and 
highly be-polished like all else about this 
crowded craft as, notably, the binnacle 
and certain brass-bound dials, on the faces 
whereof one might read such words as : 
Ahead, Astern, Fast, Slow, etc. Forward 
of this was a platform, none too roomy, 
where was a gun most carefully wrapped 
and swaddled in divers cloths, tarpaulins, 
etc. — wrapped up with as much tender 
care as if it had been a baby, and delicate 
at that. But, as the commander casually 
informed me, they had been out patrolling 
all night and "it had blown a little" — 
wherefore I surmised the cloths and tar- 
paulins aforesaid. 

"I should think," I ventured, observing 
her sharp lines and slender build, "I should 
think she would roll rather frightfully when 
it does blow a little?" 

"Well, she does a bit," he admitted, "but 
not so much — Starboard!" said he, over 
his shoulder, to the bearded mariner at 
the wheel. "Take us round by the Tiger" 



42 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

"Aye, aye, sir!" retorted the bearded 
one as we began to slide through the water. 

"Yes, she's apt to roll a bit, perhaps, 
but she's not so bad," he continued ; 
"besides, you get used to it." 

Here he fell to scanning the haze ahead 
through a pair of binoculars, a haze through 
which, as we gathered speed, ghostly shapes 
began to loom, portentous shapes that 
grew and grew upon the sight, turret, 
superstructure and embattled mast; here 
a mighty battle cruiser, yonder a super- 
destroyer, one after another, quiet-seem- 
ing on this autumn morning, and yet whose 
grim hulks held latent potentialities of 
destruction and death, as many of them 
have proved but lately. 

As we passed those silent, monstrous 
shapes, the Commander named them in 
turn, names which had been flashed round 
the earth not so long ago, names which 
shall yet figure in the histories to come 
with Grenville's Revenge, Drake's Golden 
Hind, Blake's Triumph, Anson's Centurion, 
Nelson's Victory and a score of other 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 43 

deathless names — glorious names that make 
one proud to be of the race that manned 
and fought them. 

Peacefully they rode at their moorings, 
the water lapping gently at their steel 
sides, but, as we steamed past, on more 
than one of them, and especially the grim 
Tiger, I saw the marks of the Jutland battle 
in dinted plate, scarred funnel and super- 
structure, taken when for hours on end the 
dauntless six withstood the might of the 
German fleet. 

So, as we advanced past these battle- 
scarred ships, I felt a sense of awe, that in- 
definable uplift of soul one is conscious of 
when treading with soft and reverent foot 
the dim aisles of some cathedral hallowed 
by time and the dust of our noble dead. 

"This afternoon," said the Commander, 
oifering me his cigarette case, "they're 
going to show you over the Warspite — 
the German Navy have sunk her so re- 
peatedly, you know. There," he con- 
tinued, nodding towards a fleet of squat- 
looking vessels with stumpy masts, "those 



44 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

are the auxiliaries — coal and oil and that 
sort of thing — ugly beggars, but useful. 
How about a whisky and soda ?" 

Following him down the perpendicular 
ladder, he brought me aft to a hole in the 
deck, a small hole, a round hole into which 
he proceeded to insert himself, first his 
long legs, then his broad shoulders, evi- 
dently by an artifice learned of much prac- 
tice. Finally his jauntily be-capped head 
vanished, and thereafter from the deeps 
below his cheery voice reached me. 

"I have whisky, sherry and rum — 
mind your head and take your choice!" 

I descended into a narrow chamber di- 
vided by a longish table and flanked by 
berths with a chest of drawers beneath 
each. At the further end of this somewhat 
small and dim apartment and northeasterly 
of the table was a small be-polished stove 
wherein a fire burned ; in a rack against 
a bulkhead were some half-dozen rifles, 
above our head was a rack for cutlasses, 
and upon the table was a decanter of 
whisky he had unearthed from some mys- 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 45 

terious recess, and he was very full of 
apologies because the soda had run out. 

So we sat awhile and quaffed and talked, 
during which he showed me a favourite 
rifle, small of bore but of high power and 
exquisite balance, at sight of which I 
straightway broke the tenth command- 
ment. He also showed me a portrait of 
his wife (which I likewise admired), a pic- 
ture taken by himself and by him developed 
in some dark nook aboard. 

After this, our whisky being duly de- 
spatched, we crawled into the air again, to 
find we were approaching a certain jetty. 
And now, in the delicate manoeuvre of 
bringing to and making fast, my com- 
panions, "myself and all else were utterly 
forgotten, as with voice and hand he issued 
order on order until, gently as a nesting 
bird, the destroyer came to her berth and 
was made fast. Hereupon, having shaken 
hands all round, he handed us over to other 
naval men as cheery as he, who in due 
season brought us to the depot ship, where 
luncheon awaited us. 



46 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

I have dined in many places and have 
eaten with many different folk, but never 
have I enjoyed a meal more than this, 
perhaps because of the padre who pre- 
sided at my end of the table. A manly 
cleric this, bright-eyed, resolute of jaw 
but humorous of mouth, whose white 
choker did but seem to offset the virility 
of him. A man, I judged, who preached 
little and did much — a sailor's padre in 
very truth. 

He told me how, but for an accident, he 
would have sailed with Admiral Cradock 
on his last, ill-fated cruise, where so many 
died that Right and Justice might endure. 

"Poor chaps!" said I. 

"Yes," said he, gently, "and yet it is 
surely a noble thing to — die greatly!" 

And surely, surely for all those who in 
cause so just have met Death unflinching 
and unafraid, who have taken hold upon 
that which we call Life and carried it through 
and beyond the portals of Death into a 
sphere of nobler and greater living — surely 
to such as these strong souls the Empire 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 47 

they served so nobly and loved so truly 
will one day enshrine them, their memory 
and deeds, on the brightest, most glorious 
page of her history, which shall be a 
monument more enduring than brass or 
stone, a monument that shall never pass 
away. 

So we talked of ships and the sea and of 
men until, aware that the company had 
risen, we rose also, and donning hats and 
coats, set forth, talking still. Together we 
paced beside docks and along piers that 
stretched away by the mile, massive struc- 
tures of granite and concrete, which had 
only come into being, so he told me, since 
the war. 

Side by side we ascended the broad 
gangway, and side by side we set foot 
upon that battle-scarred deck whose tim- 
bers, here and there, showed the whiter 
patches of newer wood. Here he turned 
to give me his hand, after first writing down 
name and address, and, with mutual wishes 
of meeting again, went to his duties and 
left me to the wonders of this great ship. 



48 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

Crossing the broad deck, more spacious 
it seemed than an ocean liner, I came 
where my travelling companions were 
grouped about a grim memorial of the 
Jutland battle, a huge projectile that had 
struck one of the after turrets, in the 
doing of which it had transformed itself 
into a great, convoluted disc, and was now 
mounted as a memento of that tremendous 
day. 

And here it was I became acquainted 
with my Midshipmite, who looked like an 
angel of sixteen, bore himself like a veteran, 
and spoke (when his shyness had worn 
off a little) like a British fighting man. 

To him I preferred the request that he 
would pilot me over this great vessel, which 
he (blushing a little) very readily agreed 
to do. Thereafter, in his wake, I as- 
cended stairways, climbed ladders, wriggled 
through narrow spaces, writhed round awk- 
ward corners, up and ever up. 

"It's rather awkward, I'm afraid, sir," 
said he in his gentle voice, hanging from an 
iron ladder with one hand and a foot, the 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 49 

better to address me. "You see, we never 
bring visitors this way as a rule - — " 

"Good!" said I, crushing my hat on 
firmer. "The unbeaten track for me — 
lead on!" 

Onward and upward he led until all at 
once we reached a narrow platform, railed 
round and hung about with plaited rope 
screens which he called splinter-mats, over 
which I had a view of land and water, of 
ships and basins, of miles of causeways and 
piers, none of which had been in exist- 
ence before the war. And immediately 
below me, far, far down, was the broad 
white sweep of deck, with the forward 
turrets where were housed the great guns 
whose grim muzzles stared patiently up- 
wards, nuzzling the air almost as though 
scenting another battle. 

And standing in this coign of vantage, in 
my mind's eye I saw this mighty vessel as 
she had been, the heave of the fathomless 
sea below, the whirling battle-smoke about 
her, the air full of the crashing thunder of 
her guns as she quivered 'neath their dis- 



50 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

charge. I heard the humming drone of 
shells coming from afar, a hum that grew 
to a wail — a shriek — and the sickening 
crash as they smote her or threw up great 
waterspouts high as her lofty fighting- 
tops ; I seemed to hear through it all the 
ring of electric bells from the various fire- 
controls, and voices calm and all unshaken 
by the hellish din uttering commands down 
the many speaking-tubes. 

"And you," said I, turning to the youth- 
ful figure beside me, "you were in the 
battle?" 

He blushingly admitted that he was. 

"And how did you feel?" 

He wrinkled his smooth brow and laughed 
a little shyly. 

"Really I — I hardly know, sir." 

I asked him if at such times one was 
not inclined to feel a trifle shaken, a little 
nervous, or, might one say, afraid ? 

"Yes, sir," he agreed politely, "I sup- 
pose so — only, you see, we were all too 
jolly busy to think about it !" 

"Oh!" said I, taking out a cigarette, 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 51 

"too busy ! Of course ! I see ! And where 
is the Captain during action, as a rule?" 

"As a matter of fact he stood — just 
where you are, sir. Stood there the whole 
six hours it was hottest." 

"Here!" I exclaimed. "But it is quite 
exposed." 

My Midshipmite, being a hardy veteran 
in world-shaking naval battles, permitted 
himself to smile. 

"But, you see, sir," he gently explained, 
"it's really far safer out here than being 
shut up in a gun-turret or — or down be- 
low, on account of er — er — you under- 
stand, sir ?" 

"Oh, quite!" said I, and thereafter 
thought awhile, and, receiving his ready 
permission, lighted my cigarette. "I 
think," said I, as we prepared to descend 
from our lofty perch, "I'm sure it's just 
— er — that kind of thing that brought 
one Francis Drake out of so very many 
tight corners. By the way — do you 
smoke ?" 

My Midshipmite blushingly confessed 



52 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

he did, and helped himself from my case 
with self-conscious fingers. 

Reaching the main deck in due season, I 
found I had contrived to miss the Chief 
Gunner's lecture on the great guns, where- 
upon who so agitated and bitterly apolo- 
getic as my Midshipmite, who there and 
then ushered me hastily down more awk- 
ward stairs and through narrow openings 
into a place of glistening, gleaming polish 
and furbishment where, beside the shining 
breech of a monster gun, muscular arm 
negligently leaning thereon, stood a round- 
headed, broad-shouldered man, he the pre- 
siding genius of this (as I afterwards found) 
most sacred place. 

His lecture was ended and he was ad- 
dressing a few well-chosen closing remarks 
in slightly bored fashion (he had showed 
off" his ponderous playthings to divers 
kings, potentates and bigwigs at home and 
abroad, I learned) when I, though properly 
awed by the gun but more especially by 
the gunner, ventured to suggest that a gun 
that had been through three engagements 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 53 

and had been fired so frequently must 
necessarily show some signs of wear. The 
gunner glanced at me, and I shall never 
forget that look. With his eyes on mine, 
he touched a lever in negligent fashion, 
whereon silently the great breech slipped 
away with a hiss and whistle of air, and with 
his gaze always fixed he suggested I might 
glance down the bore. 

Obediently I stooped, whereon he spake 
on this wise : 

" If you cast your heyes to the right 
abaft the breech you'll observe slight dark- 
ening of riflin's. Now glancin' t'left of 
piece you'll per-ceive slight darkening of 
riflin's. Now casting your heyes right 
forrard you'll re-mark slight roughening of 
riflin's towards muzzle of piece and — 
there y'are, sir. One hundred and twenty- 
seven times she's been fired by my 
'and and good for as many more — both 
of us. Arternoon, gentlemen, and — thank 
ye!" 

Saying which he touched a lever in the 
same negligent fashion, the mighty breech 



54 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

block slid back into place, and I walked 
forth humbly into the outer air. 

Here I took leave of my Midshipmite, 
who stood among a crowd of his fellows to 
watch me down the gangplank, and I fol- 
lowed whither I was led very full of thought, 
as well I might be, until rousing, I found 
myself on the deck of that famous Warspite, 
which our foes are so comfortably certain 
lies a shattered wreck off Jutland. Here I 
presently fell into discourse with a tall 
lieutenant, with whom I went alow and 
aloft ; he showed me cockpit, infirmary 
and engine-room ; he showed me the won- 
der of her steering apparatus, and pointed 
to the small hand-wheel in the bowels of 
this huge ship whereby she had been steered 
limping into port. He directed my gaze 
also to divers vast shell holes and rents in 
her steel sides, now very neatly mended by 
steel plates held in place by many large 
bolts. Wherever we went were sailors, 
by the hundred it seemed, and yet I was 
struck by the size and airy spaciousness 
between decks. 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 55 

"The strange thing about the Hun," 
said my companion, as we mounted up- 
ward again, "is that he is so amazingly ac- 
curate with his big guns. Anyway, as 
we steamed into range he registered direct 
hits time after time, and his misses were 
so close the spray was flying all over us. 
Yes, Fritz is wonderfully accurate, but" 
— here my companion paused to flick 
some dust from his braided cuff — "but 
when we began to knock him about a bit 
it was funny how it rattled him — quite 
funny, you know. His shots got wider 
and wider, until they were falling pretty 
well a mile wide — very funny!" and the 
lieutenant smiled dreamily. "Fritz will 
shoot magnificently if you only won't 
shoot back. But really I don't blame him 
for thinking he'd sunk us ; you see, there 
were six of 'em potting away at us at one 
time — couldn't see us for spray — " 

"And how did you feel just then?" I 
enquired. 

"Oh, rotten! You see I'd jammed my 
finger in some tackle for one thing, and 



56 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

just then the light failed us. We'd have 
bagged the lot if the light had held a little 
longer. But next time — who knows ? 
Care for a cup of tea ?" 

"Thanks!" I answered. "But where 
are the others ?" 

"Oh, by Jove! I fancy your party's 
gone — I'll see !" 

This proving indeed the case, I perforce 
took my leave, and with a midshipman to 
guide me, presently stepped aboard a boat 
which bore us back beneath the shadow of 
that mighty bridge stark against the eve- 
ning sky. 

Riding citywards through the deepen- 
ing twilight I bethought me of the Mid- 
shipmite who, amid the roar and tumult 
of grim battle, had been "too busy" to be 
afraid ; of the round-headed gunner who, 
like his gun, was ready and eager for more, 
and of the tall lieutenant who, with death 
in many awful shapes shrieking and crash- 
ing about him, felt "rotten" by reason 
of a bruised finger and failing light. 

And hereupon I felt proud that I, too, 



THE BATTLE CRUISERS 57 

was a Briton, of the same breed as these 
mighty ships and the splendid fellows 
who man them — these Keepers of the 
Seas, who in battle as in tempest do their 
duty unseen, unheard, because it is their 
duty. 

Therefore, all who are so blest as to live 
within these isles take comfort and courage 
from this — that despite raging tempest 
and desperate battle, we, trusting in the 
justice of our cause, in these iron men and 
mighty ships, may rest secure, since truly 
worthy are these, both ships and men, of 
the glorious traditions of the world's most 
glorious navy. 

But, as they do their duty by Britain 
and the Empire, let it be our inestimable 
privilege as fellow Britons to do our duty 
as nobly both to the Empire and — to 
them. 



VII 

A HOSPITAL 

The departure platform of a great sta- 
tion (for such as have eyes to see) is always 
a sad place, but nowadays it is a place 
of tragedy. 

He was tall and thin — a boyish figure 
— and his khaki-clad arm was close about 
her slender form. The hour was early and 
their corner bleak and deserted, thus few 
were by to heed his stiff-lipped, agonised 
smile and the passionate clasp of her hands, 
or to hear her heartbreaking sobs and his 
brave words of comfort ; and I, shivering 
in the early morning wind, hasted on, 
awed by a grief that made the grey world 
greyer. 

Very soon London was behind us, and 

we were whirling through a countryside 

58 



A HOSPITAL 59 

wreathed in mist wherein I seemed to see 
a girl's tear-wet cheeks and a boy's lips 
that smiled so valiantly for all their 
pitiful quiver; thus I answered my com- 
panion somewhat at random and the 
waiter's proffer of breakfast was an insult. 
And, as I stared out at misty trees and 
hedgerow I began as it were to sense a 
grimness in the very air — the million- 
sided tragedy of war; behind me the 
weeping girl, before me and looming nearer 
with every mile, the Somme battle-front. 

At a table hard by a group of clear-eyed 
subalterns were chatting and laughing over 
breakfast, and in their merriment I, too, 
rejoiced. Yet the grimness was with me 
still as we rocked and swayed through the 
wreathing mist. 

But trains, even on a foggy morning, 
have a way of getting there at last, so, in 
due season, were docks and more docks, 
with the funnels of ships, and beyond these 
misty shapes upon a misty sea, the gaunt 
outlines of destroyers that were to convoy 
us Francewards. Hereupon my companion, 



60 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

K., a hardened traveller, inured to customs, 
passports and the like noxious things, led 
me through a jostling throng, his long 
legs striding rapidly when they found oc- 
casion, past rank upon rank of soldiers 
returning to duty, very neat and orderly, 
and looking, I thought, a little grim. 

Presently the warps were cast off and 
very soon we were in the lift and roll of the 
Channel ; the white cliffs slowly faded, 
the wind freshened, and I, observing that 
every one had donned life belts, forthwith 
girded on one of the clumsy contrivances 
also. 

In mid-channel it blew hard and the 
destroyers seemed to be making heavy 
weather of it, now lost in spray, now show- 
ing a glistening height of freeboard, and, 
as I watched, remembering why they 
were there, my cumbrous life belt grew 
suddenly very comfortable. 

Came a growing density on the horizon, 
a blue streak that slowly and little by little 
grew into roofs, chimneys, docks and ship- 
ping, and France was before us, and it 



A HOSPITAL 61 

was with almost reverent hands that I 
laid aside my clumsy cork jacket and was 
presently on French soil. And yet, except 
for a few chattering porters, the air rang 
with good English voices hailing each other 
in cheery greetings, and khaki was every- 
where. But now, as I followed my com- 
panion's long legs past these serried, dun- 
coloured ranks, it seemed to me that they 
held themselves straighter and looked a 
little more grim even than they had done 
in England. 

I stood, lost in the busy scene before me, 
when, hearing K.'s voice, I turned to be 
introduced to Captain R., tall, bright- 
eyed, immaculate, and very much master 
of himself and circumstances it seemed, 
for, despite crowded customs office, he 
whisked us through and thence before 
sundry officials, who glared at me and my 
passport, signed, stamped, returned it and 
permitted me to go. 

After luncheon we drove to a great base 
hospital where I was introduced to the 
Colonel-Surgeon in charge, a quiet man, 



62 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

who took us readily under his able guid- 
ance. And indeed a huge place was this, 
a place for me of awe and wonder, the 
more so as I learned that the greater part 
of it had come into being within one short 
year. 

It lies beside the sea, this hospital, where 
clean winds blow, its neat roadways are 
bordered by green lawns and flanked by 
long, low buildings that reach away in far 
perspective, buildings of corrugated iron, 
of wood and asbestos, a very city, but one 
where there is no riot and rush of traffic, 
truly a city of peace and brooding quietude. 

And as I looked upon this silent city, 
my awe grew, for the Colonel, in his gentle 
voice, spoke of death and wounds, of shell- 
shock, nerve-wrack and insanity; but he 
told also of wonderful cures, of miracles 
performed on those that should have died, 
and of reason and sanity won back. 

"And you?" I questioned, "have you 
done many such wonders ?" 

"Few!" he answered, and sighed. "You 
see, my duties now are chiefly adminis- 



A HOSPITAL 63 

trativc," and he seemed gently grieved that 
it should be so. 

He brought us into wards, long, airy and 
many-windowed, places of exquisite neat- 
ness and order, where calm-faced sisters 
were busied, and smart, soft-treading or- 
derlies came and went. Here in white 
cots lay many bandaged forms, some who, 
propped on pillows, watched us bright- 
eyed and nodded in cheery greeting; 
others who lay so ominously still. 

But as I passed between the long rows of 
cots, I was struck with the look of utter 
peace and content on so many of the faces 
and wondered, until, remembering the hell 
whence they had so lately come, I thought 
I understood. Thus, bethinking me of 
how these dire hurts had been come by, I 
took off my hat, and trod between these 
beds of silent suffering as softly as I could, 
for these men had surely come "out of 
great tribulation." 

In another ward I saw numbers of Ger- 
man wounded, most of them bearded ; 
many there were who seemed weakly and 



64 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

undersized, and among them were many 
grey heads, a very motley company. These, 
the Colonel informed us, received precisely 
the same treatment as our own wounded, 
even to tobacco and cigarettes. 

We followed our soft- voiced conductor 
through many other wards where he showed 
us strange and wondrous devices in splints ; 
he halted us by hanging beds of weird shape 
and cots that swung on pulleys ; he des- 
canted on wounds to flesh and bone and 
brain, of lives snatched from the grip of 
Death by the marvels of up-to-date sur- 
gery, and as I listened to his pleasant 
voice I sensed much of the grim wonders 
he left untold. We visited X-ray rooms 
and operating theatre against whose walls 
were glass cases filled with a multitudinous 
array of instruments for the saving of life, 
and here it was I learned that in certain 
cases, a chisel, properly handled, was a 
far more delicate tool than the finest 
saw. 

"A wonderful place," said I for the 
hundredth time as we stepped out upon a 



A HOSPITAL 65 

trim, green lawn. The Colonel-Surgeon 
smiled. 

"It took some planning," he admitted, "a 
little while ago it was a sandy wilderness." 

"But these lawns ?" I demurred. 

"Came to me of their own accord," he 
answered. "At least, the seed did, washed 
ashore from a wreck, so I had it planted 
and it has done rather well. Now, what 
else can I show you ? It would take all 
the afternoon to visit every ward, and they 
are all much alike — but there is the mad 
ward if you'd care to see that ? This way." 

A strange place, this, divided into com- 
partments or cubicles where were many 
patients in the familiar blue overalls, most 
of whom rose and stood at attention as we en- 
tered. Tall, soldierly figures they seemed, 
and yet with an indefinable something in 
their looks — a vagueness of gaze, a loose- 
lipped, too-ready smile, a vacancy of ex- 
pression. Some there were who scowled 
sullenly enough, others who sat crouched 
apart, solitary souls, who, I learned, felt 
themselves outcast; others again crouched 



66 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

in corners haunted by the dread of a pur- 
suing vengeance always at hand. 

One such the Colonel accosted, asking 
what was wrong. The man looked up, 
looked down and muttered unintelligibly, 
whereupon the Sister spoke. 

"He believes that every one thinks him 
a spy," she explained, and touched the 
man's bowed head with a hand as gentle 
as her voice. 

"Shell-shock is a strange thing," said the 
Colonel-Surgeon, "and affects men in many 
extraordinary ways, but seldom perma- 
nently." 

"You mean that those poor fellows will 
recover ?" I asked. 

"Quite ninety per cent," he answered in 
his quiet, assured voice. 

I was shown over laundries complete in 
every detail ; I walked through clothing 
stores where, in a single day, six hundred 
men had been equipped from head to foot ; 
I beheld large machines for the sterilisation 
of garments foul with the grime of battle 
and other things. 



A HOSPITAL 67 

Truly, here, within the hospital that had 
grown, mushroom-like, within the wild, 
was everything for the alleviation of hurts 
and suffering more awful than our fight- 
ing ancestors ever had to endure. Pres- 
ently I left this place, but now, although a 
clean, fresh wind blew and the setting sun 
peeped out, the world somehow seemed a 
grimmer place than ever. 

In the Dark Ages, humanity endured 
much of sin and shame and suffering, but 
never such as in this age of Reason and 
Culture. This same earth has known evils 
of every kind, has heard the screams of 
outraged innocence, the groan of tortured 
flesh, and has reddened beneath the heel 
of Tyranny; this same sun has seen the 
smoke and ravishment of cities and been 
darkened by the hateful mists of war — 
but never such a war as this of cultured 
barbarity with all its new devilishness. 
Shell-shock and insanity, poison gas and 
slow strangulation, liquid fire and poison 
shells. Rape, Murder, Robbery, Piracy, 
Slavery — each and every crime is here — 



68 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

never has humanity endured all these 
horrors together until now. 

But remembering by whose will these 
evils have been loosed upon the world, 
remembering the innocent blood, the bit- 
ter tears, the agony of soul and heartbreak, 
I am persuaded that Retribution must 
follow as sure as to-morrow's dawn. The 
evil that men do lives after them and lives 
on for ever. 

Should they, who have worked for and 
planned this misery, escape the ephemeral 
justice of man, there is yet the inexorable 
tribunal of the Hereafter, which no trans- 
gressor, small or great, humble or mighty, 
may in any wise escape. 



VIII 

THE GUNS 

A fine, brisk morning; a long, tree- 
bordered road dappled with fugitive sun- 
beams, making a glory of puddles that leapt 
in shimmering spray beneath our flying 
wheels. A long, straight road that ran on 
and on unswerving, uphill and down, be- 
neath tall, straight trees that flitted past in 
never-ending procession, and beyond these 
a rolling, desolate countryside of blue hills 
and dusky woods ; and in the air from 
beyond this wide horizon a sound that rose 
above the wind gusts and the noise of our 
going, a faint whisper that seemed in the 
air close about us and yet to be of the vague 
distances, a whisper of sound, a stammer- 
ing murmur, now rising, now falling, but 
never quite lost. 

69 



70 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR . 

In rain-sodden fields to right and left were 
many figures bent in diligent labour, men 
in weatherworn, grey-blue uniforms and 
knee-boots, while on the roadside were men 
who lounged, or sat smoking cigarettes, 
rifle across knees and wicked-looking bay- 
onets agleam, wherefore these many German 
prisoners toiled with the unremitting dili- 
gence aforesaid. 

The road surface improving somewhat 
we went at speed and, as we lurched and 
swayed, the long, straight road grew less 
deserted. Here and there transport lorries 
by ones and twos, then whole convoys 
drawn up beside the road, often axle deep 
in mud, or lumbering heavily onwards ; 
and ever as we went that ominous, stammer- 
ing murmur beyond the horizon grew 
louder and more distinct. 

On we went, through scattered villages 
alive with khaki-clad figures with morions 
cocked at every conceivable angle, past 
leafy lanes bright with the wink of long 
bayonets ; through country towns, whose 
wide squares and narrow, old-world streets 



THE GUNS 71 

fang with the ordered tramp of feet, the 
stamp of horses and rumble of gun wheels, 
where ruddy English faces turned to stare 
and broad khaki backs swung easily be- 
neath their many accoutrements. And in 
street and square and by-street, always and 
ever was that murmurous stammer of 
sound more ominous and threatening, yet 
which nobody seemed to heed — not even 
K., my companion, who puffed his cigarette 
and "was glad it had stopped raining." 

So, picking our way through streets 
athrong with British faces, dodging guns 
and limbers, wagons and carts of all de- 
scriptions, we came out upon the open 
road again. And now, there being no 
surface at all to speak of, we perforce went 
slow, and I watched where, just in front, a 
string of lorries lumbered heavily along, 
pitching and rolling very much like boats 
in a choppy sea. 

Presently we halted to let a column go 
by, officers a-horse and a-foot with the long 
files behind, but all alike splashed and 
spattered with mud. Men, these, who 



72 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

carried their rifles anyhow, who tramped 
along, rank upon rank, weary men, who 
showed among them here and there grim 
evidence of battle — rain-sodden men with 
hair that clung to muddy brows beneath 
the sloping brims of muddy helmets ; men 
who tramped ankle-deep in mud and who 
sang and whistled blithe as birds. So they 
splashed wearily through the mud, up- 
borne in their fatigue by that indomitable 
spirit that has always made the Briton the 
fighting man he is. 

At second speed we toiled along again 
behind the lorries who were making as bad 
weather of it as ever, when all at once I 
caught my breath, hearkening to the far, 
faint skirling of Highland bagpipes, and, 
leaning from the car, saw before us a com- 
pany of Highlanders, their mud-splashed 
knees a-swing together, their khaki kilts 
swaying in rhythm, their long bayonets 
a-twinkle, while down the wind came the 
regular tramp of their feet and the wild, 
frenzied wailing of their pipes. Soon we 
were up with them, bronzed, stalwart 



THE GUNS 73 

figures, grim fighters from muddy spatter- 
dashes to steel helmets, beneath which eyes 
turned to stare at us — eyes blue and merry, 
eyes dark and sombre — as they swung 
along to the lilting music of the pipes. 

At the rear the stretcher-bearers marched, 
the rolled-up stretchers upon their shoul- 
ders ; but even so, by various dark stains 
and marks upon that dingy canvas, I knew 
that here was a company that had done and 
endured much. Close by me was a man 
whose hairy knee was black with dried 
blood — to him I tentatively proifered my 
cigarette case. 

"Wull ye hae one the noo?" I ques- 
tioned. For a moment he eyed me a trifle 
dour and askance, then he smiled (a grave 
Scots smile). 

"Thank ye, I wull that!" said he, and 
extracted the cigarette with muddy fingers. 

"Ye'll hae a sore leg, I'm thinking!" 
said I. 

"Ou aye," he admitted with the same 
grave smile, "but it's no sae muckle as a* 
that — juist a wee bit skelpit I — " 



74 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

Our car moved forward, gathered speed, 
and we bumped and swayed on our way ; 
the bagpipes shrieked and wailed, grew 
plaintively soft, and were drowned and 
lost in that other sound which was a murmur 
no longer, but a rolling, distant thunder, 
with occasional moments of silence. 

"Ah, the guns at last!" said I. 

"Yes," nodded K., lighting another 
cigarette, "I've been listening to them for 
the last hour." 

Here my friend F., who happened to be 
the Intelligence Officer in charge, leaned 
forward to say : 

"I'm afraid we can't get into Beaumont 
Hamel, the Boches are strafing it rather, 
this morning, but we'll go as near as we 
can get, and then on to what was La Boiselle. 
We shall leave the car soon, so better get 
into your tin hats." Forthwith I buckled 
on one of the morions we had brought for 
the purpose and very uncomfortable I 
found it. Having made it fairly secure, I 
turned, grinning furtively, to behold K.'s 
classic features crowned with his outlandish- 



THE GUNS 75 

seeming headgear, and presently caught him 
grinning furtively at mine. 

"They're not so heavy as I expected," 
said I. 

"About half a pound," he suggested. 

Pulling up at a shell-shattered village we 
left the car and trudged along a shell-torn 
road, along a battered and rusty railway 
line, and presently struck into a desolate 
waste intersected by sparse hedgerows 
and with here and there desolate, leafless 
trees, many of which, in shattered trunk 
and broken bough, showed grim traces of 
what had been ; and ever as we advanced 
these ugly scars grew more frequent, and 
we were continually dodging sullen pools 
that were the work of bursting shells. 
And then it began to rain again. 

On we went, splashing through puddles, 
slipping in mud, and ever as we went my 
boots and my uncomfortable helmet grew 
heavier and heavier, while in the heaven 
above, in the earth below and in the air 
about us was the quiver and thunder of 
unseen guns. As we stumbled through the 



76 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

muddy desolation I beheld wretched hovels 
wherein khaki-clad forms moved, and from 
one of these damp and dismal structures a 
merry whistling issued, with hoarse laughter. 

On we tramped, through rain and mud, 
which, like my helmet, seemed to grow 
momentarily heavier. 

" K.," said I, as he floundered into a shell 
hole, "about how heavy did you say these 
helmets were?" • 

"About a pound!" said he, fierce-eyed. 
"Confound the mud!" 

Away to our left and high in air a puff 
of smoke appeared, a pearl-grey, fleecy 
cloud, and as I, unsuspecting, watched it 
writhe into fantastic shapes, my ears were 
smitten with a deafening report, and in- 
stinctively I ducked. 

"Shrapnel!" said F., waving his hand 
in airy introduction. "They're searching 
the road yonder I expect — ah, there goes 
another! Yes, they're trying the road 
yonder — but here's the trench — in with 
you!" 

I am free to confess that I entered that 



THE GUNS 77 

trench precipitately — so hurriedly, in fact, 
that my helmet fell off, and, as I replaced 
it, I was not sorry to see that this trench 
was very deep and narrow. As we pro- 
gressed, very slowly by reason of clinging 
mud, F. informed us that this trench had 
been our old front line before we took 
Beaumont Hamel ; and I noticed many 
things, as, clips of cartridges, unexploded 
bombs, Lewis-gun magazines, parts of a 
broken machine gun, and various odds and 
ends of accoutrements. In some places 
this trench had fallen in because of rain and 
other things and was almost impassable, 
wherefore, after much floundering and 
splashing, F. suggested we should climb 
out again, which we did forthwith, very 
moist and muddy. 

And thus at last I looked at that wide 
stretch of country across which our men 
had advanced unshaken and undismayed, 
through a hell the like of which the world 
had never known before ; and, as I stood 
there, I could almost see those long, ad- 
vancing waves of khaki-clad figures, their 



78 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

ranks swept by the fire of countless rifles 
and machine guns, pounded by high ex- 
plosives, blasted by withering shrapnel, lost 
in the swirling death-mist of poison gas — 
heroic ranks which, rent asunder, shattered, 
torn, yet swung steadily on through smoke 
and flame, unflinching and unafraid. As 
if to make the picture more real, came the 
thunderous crash of a shell behind us, but 
this time I forgot to duck. 

Far in front of us I saw a huge puff of 
smoke, and as it thinned out beheld clouds 
of earth and broken beams that seemed to 
hang suspended a moment ere they fell and 
vanished. After a moment came another 
puff of smoke further to our right, and be- 
yond this another, and again, beyond this, 
another. 

"A battery of heavies," said F. 

Even as he spoke the four puffs burst 
forth again and upon exactly the same 
ground. 

At this juncture a head appeared over 
the parapet behind us and after some talk 
with F., came one who tendered us a pair 



THE GUNS 79 

of binoculars, by whose aid I made out the 
British new line of trenches which had once 
been German. So I stood, dry-mouthed, 
to watch the burst of those huge shells 
exploding upon our British line. Fasci- 
nated, I stared until F.'s hand on my arm 
aroused me, and returning the glasses with 
a hazy word of thanks I followed my com- 
panions, though often turning to watch the 
shooting which now I thought much too 
good. 

And now we were traversing the great 
battlefield where, not long since, so many 
of our bravest had fallen that Britain might 
still be Britain. Even yet, upon its torn 
and trampled surface I could read some- 
thing of the fight — here a broken shoulder 
belt, there a cartridge pouch, yonder a 
stained and tattered coat, while every- 
where lay bombs, English and German. 

"If you want to see La Boiselle properly 
we must hurry!" said F., and off he went 
at the double with K.'s long legs striding 
beside him, but, as for me, I must needs 
turn for one last look where those deadly 



80 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

smoke puffs came and went with such 
awful regularity. 

The rain had stopped, but it was three 
damp and mud-spattered wretches who 
clambered back into the waiting car. 

"K.," said I, as we removed our cum- 
brous headgear, "about how much do you 
suppose these things weigh ?" 

"Fully a ton!" he answered, jerking his 
cap over his eyes and scowlingly accepting 
a cigarette. 

Very soon the shattered village was far 
behind and we were threading a devious 
course between huge steam-tractors, guns, 
motor-lorries and more guns. We passed 
soldiers a-horse and a-foot and long strings 
of ambulance cars ; to right and left of the 
road were artillery parks and great camps, 
that stretched away into the distance. 
Here also were vast numbers of the ubiqui- 
tous motor-lorry with many three-wheeled 
tractors for the big guns. We sped past 
hundreds of horses picketed in long lines ; 
past countless tents smeared crazily in 
various coloured paints ; past huts little 



THE GUNS 81 

and huts big; past swamps knee-deep in 
mud where muddy men were taking down 
or setting up other tents. On we sped 
through all the confused order of a mighty 
army, until, chancing to raise my eyes 
aloft, I beheld a huge balloon, which, as I 
watched, mounted up and up into the air. 

"One of our sausages!" said F., gloved 
hand waving. "Plenty of 'em round here; 
see, there's another in that cloud, and 
beyond it another." 

So for a while I rode with my eyes turned 
upwards, and thus I presently saw far 
ahead many aeroplanes that flew in strange, 
zigzag fashion, now swooping low, now 
climbing high, now twisting and turning 
giddily. 

"Some of our 'planes under fire!" said 
F., "you can see the shrapnel bursting all 
around 'em — there's the smoke — we call 
'em woolly bears. Won't see any Boche 
'planes, though — rather not ! " 

Amidst all these wonders and marvels 
our fleet car sped on, jolting and lurching 
violently over ruts, pot-holes and the like 



82 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

until we came to a part of the road where 
many men were engaged with pick and 
shovel; and here, on either side of the 
highway, I noticed many grim-looking heaps 
and mounds — ugly, shapeless dumps, de- 
pressing in their very hideousness. Beside 
one such unlovely dump our car pulled up, 
and F., gloved finger pointing, announced : 

"The Church of La Boiselle. That heap 
you see yonder was once the Mairie, and 
beyond, the schoolhouse. The others were 
houses and cottages. Oh, La Boiselle was 
quite a pretty place once. We get out 
here to visit the guns — this way." 

Obediently I followed whither he led, 
nothing speaking, for surely here was 
matter beyond words. Leaving the road, 
we floundered over what seemed like ash 
heaps, but which had once been German 
trenches faced and reinforced by concrete 
and steel plates. Many of these last lay 
here and there, awfully bent and twisted, 
but of trenches I saw none save a few yards 
here and there half filled with indescribable 
debris. It was, indeed, a place of horror -~ 



THE GUNS 83 

a frightful desolation beyond all words. 
Everywhere about us were signs of dreadful 
death — they came to one in the very air, 
in lowering heaven and tortured earth. 
Far as the eye could reach the ground was 
pitted with great shell holes, so close that 
they broke into one another and formed 
horrid pools full of shapeless things within 
the slime. 

Across this hellish waste I went cau- 
tiously by reason of torn and twisted tangles 
of German barbed wire, of hand grenades 
and huge shells, of broken and rusty iron 
and steel that once were deadly machine 
guns. As I picked my way among all this 
flotsam, I turned to take up a bayonet, 
slipped in the slime and sank to my waist 
in a shell hole — even then I didn't touch 
bottom, but scrambled out, all grey mud 
from waist down — but I had the bayonet. 

It was in this woeful state that I shook 
hands with the Major of the battery. And 
as we stood upon that awful waste, he 
chattered, I remember, of books. Then, 
side by side, we came to the battery — four 



84 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

mighty howitzers, that crashed and roared 
and shook the very earth with each dis- 
charge, and whose shells roared through the 
air with the rush of a dozen express trains. 

Following the Major's directing finger, I 
fixed my gaze some distance above the 
muzzle of the nearest gun and, marvel of 
marvels, beheld that dire messenger of 
death and destruction rush forth, soaring, 
upon its way, up and up, until it was lost 
in cloud. Time after time I saw the huge 
shells leap skywards and vanish on their 
long journey, and stood thus lost in wonder, 
and as I watched I could not but remark 
on the speed and dexterity with which the 
crews handled these monstrous engines. 

"Yes," nodded the Major, "strange thing 
is that a year ago they weren't, you know — 
guns weren't in existence and the men 
weren't gunners — clerks an' all that sort 
of thing, you know — civilians, what?" 

"They're pretty good gunners now — 
judging by effect ! " said I, nodding towards 
the abomination of desolation that had 
once been a village. 



THE GUNS 85 

"Rather!" nodded the Major, cheerily, 
"used to think it took three long years to 
make a gunner once — do it in six short 
months now ! Pretty good going for old 
England, what ? How about a cup of tea 
in my dugout ?" 

But evening was approaching, and having 
far to go we had perforce to refuse his hos- 
pitality and bid him a reluctant good-by. 

"Don't forget to take a peep at the mine 
craters," said he, and waving a cheery adieu, 
vanished into his dugout. 

Ten minutes' walk, along the road, and 
before us rose a jagged mount, and beyond 
it another, uncanny hills, seared and cracked 
and sinister, up whose steep slopes I 
scrambled and into whose yawning depths 
I gazed in awestruck wonder; so deep, so 
wide and huge of circumference, it seemed 
rather the result of some titanic convulsion 
of nature than the handiwork of man. 

I could imagine the cataclysmic roar of 
the explosion, the smoke and flame of the 
mighty upheaval and war found for me 
yet another horror as I turned and de- 



86 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

scended the precipitous slope. Now, as I 
went, I stumbled over a small mound, then 
halted all at once, for at one end of this was 
a very small cross, rudely constructed and 
painted white, and tacked to this a strip of 
lettered tin, bearing a name and number, 
and beneath these the words, "One of the 
best." So I took off" my hat and stood 
awhile beside that lonely mound of muddy 
earth ere I went my way. 

Slowly our car lurched onward through 
the waste, and presently on either side the 
way I saw other such mounds and crosses, 
by twos and threes, by fifties, by hundreds, 
in long rows beyond count. And looking 
around me on this dreary desolation I 
knew that one day (since nothing dies) 
upon this place of horror grass would grow 
and flowers bloom again ; along this now 
desolate and deserted road people would 
come by the thousand ; these humble 
crosses and mounds of muddy earth would 
become to all Britons a holy place where so 
many of our best and bravest lie, who, un- 
dismayed, have passed through the portals 



THE GUNS 87 

of Death into the fuller, greater, nobler 
living. 

Full of such thoughts I turned for one 
last look, and then I saw that the setting 
sun had turned each one of these humble 
little crosses into things of shining glory. 



IX 

A TRAINING CAMP 

The great training camp lay, a rain- 
lashed wilderness of windy levels and 
bleak, sandy hills, range upon range, far 
as the eye could see, with never a living 
thing to break the monotony. But pres- 
ently, as our car lurched and splashed upon 
its way, there rose a sound that grew and 
grew, the awesome sound of countless 
marching feet. 

On they came, these marching men, 
until we could see them by the hundred, 
by the thousand, their serried ranks stretch- 
ing away and away until they were lost 
in distance. Scots were here, Lowland and 
Highland ; English and Irish were here, 
with bronzed New Zealanders, adventurous 
Canadians and hardy Australians ; men, 
these, who had come joyfully across half 

88 



A TRAINING CAMP 89 

the world to fight, and, if need be, die for 
those ideals which have made the Empire 
assuredly the greatest and mightiest this 
world has ever known. And as I listened 
to the rhythmic tramp of these countless 
feet, it seemed like the voice of this vast 
Empire proclaiming to the world that 
Wrong and Injustice must cease among 
the nations ; that man, after all, despite 
all the " Frightfulness " that warped in- 
telligence may conceive, is yet faithful to 
the highest in him, faithful to that death- 
less, purposeful determination that Right 
shall endure, the abiding belief of which 
has brought him through the dark ages, 
through blood and misery and shame, on 
his progress ever upward. 

So, while these men of the Empire 
tramped past through blinding rain and 
wind, our car stopped before a row of 
low-lying wooden buildings, whence pres- 
ently issued a tall man in rain-sodden trench 
cap and burberry, who looked at me with 
a pair of very dark, bright eyes and gripped 
my hand in hearty clasp. 



9 o GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

He was apologetic because of the rain, 
since, as he informed us, he had just or- 
dered all men to their quarters, and thus 
I should see nothing doing in the training 
line; nevertheless he cheerfully offered 
to show us over the camp, despite mud 
and wind and rain, and to explain things 
as fully as he could ; whereupon we as 
cheerfully accepted. 

The wind whistled about us, the rain 
pelted us, but the Major heeded it nothing 
— neither did I — while K. loudly con- 
gratulated himself on having come in 
waders and waterproof hat, as, through 
mud and mire, through puddles and clog- 
ging sand, we followed the Major's long 
boots, crossing bare plateaux, climbing 
precipitous slopes, leaping trenches, slip- 
ping and stumbling, while ever the Major 
talked, wherefore I heeded not wind or 
rain, for the Major talked well. 

He descanted on the new and horribly 
vicious methods of bayonet fighting — 
the quick thrust and lightning recovery; 
struggling with me upon a sandy, rain- 



A TRAINING CAMP 91 

swept height, he showed me how, in wrest- 
ling for your opponent's rifle, the bayonet 
is the thing. He halted us before devilish 
contrivances of barbed wire, each different 
from the other, but each just as ugly. He 
made us peep through loopholes, each and 
every different from the other, yet each and 
every skilfully hidden from an enemy's obser- 
vation. We stood beside trenches of every 
shape and kind while he pointed out their 
good and bad points ; he brought us to a 
place where dummy figures had been set up, 
their rags a-flutter, forlorn objects in the rain. 
"Here," said he, "is where we teach 
'em to throw live bombs — you can see 
where they've been exploding; dummies 
look a bit off-colour, don't they?" And 
he pointed to the ragged scarecrows with 
his whip. "You know, I suppose," he 
continued, "that a Mills' bomb is quite 
safe until you take out the pin, and then it 
is quite safe as long as you hold it, but the 
moment it is loosed the lever flies off, 
which releases the firing lever and in a 
few seconds it explodes. It is surprising 



92 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

how men vary ; some are born bombers, 
some soon learn, but some couldn't be 
bombers if they tried — not that they're 
cowards, it's just a case of mentality. 
I've seen men take hold of a bomb, pull 
out the pin, and then stand with the thing 
clutched in their fingers, absolutely unable 
to move ! And there they'd stand till 
Lord knows when if the Sergeant didn't 
take it from them. I remember a queer 
case once. We were saving the pins to 
rig up dummy bombs, and the order was : 
'Take the bomb in your right hand, remove 
the pin, put the pin in your pocket, and 
at the word of command, throw the bomb.' 
Well, this particular fellow was so wrought 
up that he threw away the pin and put 
the bomb in his pocket !" 

"Was he killed?" I asked. 

"No. The sergeant just had time to 
dig the thing out of the man's pocket and 
throw it away. Bomb exploded in the 
air and knocked 'em both flat." 

"Did the sergeant get the V.C. or M.C. 
or anything?" I enquired. 



A TRAINING CAMP 93 

The Major smiled and shook his head. 

"I have a good many sergeants here 
and they can't all have 'em ! Now come 
and see my lecture theatres." 

Presently, looming through the rain, I 
saw huge circular structures that I could 
make nothing of, until, entering the larger 
of the two, I stopped in surprise, for I 
looked down into a huge, circular amphi- 
theatre, with circular rows of seats descend- 
ing tier below tier to a circular floor of 
sand, very firm and hard. 

"All made out of empty oil cans !" said 
the Major, tapping the nearest can with 
his whip. "I have 'em filled with sand 
and stacked as you see ! — good many 
thousands of 'em here. Find it good for 
sound too — shout and try ! This place 
holds about five thousand men — " 

"Whose wonderful idea was this ?" 

"Oh, just a little wheeze of my own. 
Now, how about the poison gas ; feel like 
going through it?" 

I glanced at K., K. glanced at me. I 
nodded, so did K. 



94 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

"Certainly!" said I. Wherefore the 
Major led us over sandy hills and along 
sandy valleys and so to a dingy and weather- 
worn hut, in whose dingy interior we found 
a bright-faced subaltern in dingy uniform 
and surrounded by many dingy boxes and 
a heterogeneous collection of things. The 
subaltern was busy at work on a bomb with 
a penknife, while at his elbow stood a 
sergeant grasping a screwdriver, who, per- 
ceiving the Major, came to attention, while 
the cheery sub. rose, beaming. 

"Can you give us some gas?" enquired 
the Major, after we had been introduced, 
and had shaken hands. 

"Certainly, sir!" nodded the cheerful 
sub. "Delighted!" 

"You might explain something about 
it, if you will," suggested the Major. 
"Bombs and gas is your line, you know." 

The sub. beamed, and giving certain di- 
rections to his sergeant, spake something 
on this wise. 

"Well, 'Frightful Fritz' — I mean the 
Boches, y'know, started bein' frightful some 



A TRAINING CAMP 95 

time ago, y'know — playin' their little 
tricks with gas an' tear-shells an' liquid 
fire an' that, and we left 'em to it. Y'see, 
it wasn't cricket — wasn't playin' the game 
— what ! But Fritz kept at it and was 
happy as a bird, till one day we woke up 
an' started bein' frightful too, only when 
we did begin we were frightfuller than ever 
Fritz thought of bein' — yes, rather ! Our 
gas is more deadly, our lachrymatory shells 
are more lachrymose an' our liquid fire's 
quite tophole — won't go out till it burns 
out — rather not ! So Frightful Fritz is 
licked at his own dirty game. I've tried 
his and I've tried ours, an' I know." 

Here the sergeant murmured deferentially 
into the sub.'s ear, whereupon he beamed 
again and nodded. 

"Everything's quite ready!" he an- 
nounced, "so if you're on?" 

Here, after a momentary hesitation, I 
signified I was, whereupon our sub. grew im- 
mensely busy testing sundry ugly, grey flan- 
nel gas helmets, fitted with staring eye-pieces 
of talc and with a hideous snout in front. 



96 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

Having duly fitted on these clumsy things 
and buttoned them well under our coat 
collars, having shown us how we must 
breathe out through the mouthpiece which 
acts as a kind of exhaust, our sub. donned 
his own headpiece, through which his 
cheery voice reached me in muffled tones : 

"You'll feel a kind of ticklin' feelin' in 
the throat at first, but that's all O.K. — 
only the chemical the flannel's saturated 
with. Now follow me, please, an' would 
you mind runnin', the rain's apt to weaken 
the solution. This way!" 

Dutifully we hasted after him, plough- 
ing through the wet sand, until we came to 
a heavily timbered doorway that seemingly 
opened into the hillside, and, beyond this 
yawning doorway I saw a thick, greenish- 
yellow mist, a fog exactly the colour of 
strong absinthe ; and then we were in it. 
K.'s tall figure grew blurred, indistinct, 
faded utterly away, and I was alone amid 
that awful, swirling vapour that held death 
in such agonising form. 

I will confess I was not happy, my throat 



A TRAINING CAMP 97 

was tickling provokingly, I began to cough 
and my windpipe felt too small. I has- 
tened forward, but, even as I went, the light 
grew dimmer and the swirling fog more 
dense. I groped blindly, began to run, 
stumbled, and in that moment my hand 
came in contact with an unseen rope. On 
I went into gloom, into blackness, until I 
was presently aware of my companions in 
front and mightily glad of it. In a while, 
still following this invisible rope, we turned 
a corner, the fog grew less opaque, thinned 
away to a green mist, and we were out in 
the daylight again, and thankful was I to 
whip off my stifling helmet and feel the clean 
wind in my hair and the beat of rain upon 
my face. 

"Notice the ticklin' feelin'?" enquired 
our sub., as he took our helmets and put 
them carefully by. "Bit tryin' at first, 
but you soon get used to it — yes, rather. 
Some of the men funk tryin' at first — 
and some hold their breath until they fairly 
well burst, an' some won't go in at all, so 
we carry 'em in. That gas you've tried is 



98 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

about twenty times stronger than we get 
it in the open, but these helmets are a 
rippin' dodge till the chemical evaporates, 
then, of course, they're no earthly. This 
is the latest device — quite a tophole 
scheme!" And he showed us a box-like 
contrivance which, when in use, is slung 
round the neck. 

"Are you often in the gas ?" I enquired. 

"Every day — yes, rather !" 

"For how long ?" 

"Well, I stayed in once for five hours 
on end — " 

"Five hours!" I exclaimed, aghast. 

"Y'see, I was experimentin ' !" 

"And didn't you feel any bad effects ?■" 

"Yes, rather! I was simply dyin' for a 
smoke. Like to try a lachrymatory?" he 
enquired, reaching up to a certain dingy 
box. 

"Yes," said I, glancing at K. "Oh, 
yes, if— " 

"Only smart for the time bein'," our 
sub. assured me. "Make you weep a 
bit!" Here from the dingy box he fished 



A TRAINING CAMP 99 

a particularly vicious-looking bomb and 
fell to poking at it with a screwdriver. I 
immediately stepped back. So did K. 
The Major pulled his moustache and nicked 
a chunk of mud from his boot with his 
whip. 

"Er — I suppose that thing's all right ?" 
he enquired. 

"Oh, yes, quite all right, sir, quite all 
right," nodded the sub., using the screw- 
driver as a hammer. "Only wants a little 
fixin'." 

As I watched that deadly thing, for the 
second time I felt distinctly unhappy; 
however, the refractory pin, or whatever 
it was, being fixed to his satisfaction, our 
sub. led the way out of the dingy hut and 
going some few paces ahead, paused. 

"I'm goin' to give you a liquid-fire 
bomb first ! " said he. "Watch ! " 

He drew back his hand and hurled the 
bomb. Almost immediately there was a 
shattering report and the air was full of 
thick, grey smoke and yellow flame, smoke 
that rolled heavily along the ground to- 



too GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

wards us, flame that burned ever fiercer, 
fiery yellow tongues that leapt from the 
sand here and there, that writhed in the 
wind-gusts, but never diminished. 

"Stoop down!" cried the sub., suiting 
the action to word, "stoop down and get 
a mouthful of that smoke — makes you 
jolly sick and unconscious in no time if 
you get enough of it. Top-hole bomb, 
that — what!" 

Then he brought us where those yellow 
flames leapt and hissed ; some of these he 
covered with wet sand, and lo ! they had 
ceased to be ; but the moment the sand 
was kicked away up they leapt again 
fiercer than ever. 

"We use 'em for bombing Boche dug- 
outs now!" said he; and remembering the 
dugouts I had seen, I could picture the 
awful fate of those within, the choking 
fumes, the fire-scorched bodies ! Truly the 
exponents of Frightfulness have felt the 
recoil of their own vile methods. 

"This is a lachrymatory!" said the 
sub., whisking another bomb from his 



A TRAINING CAMP 101 

pocket. "When it pops, run forward and 
get in the smoke. It'll sting a bit, but 
don't rub the tears away — let 'em flow. 
Don't touch your eyes, it'll only inflame 
'em — just weep ! Ready ? One, two, 
three!" A second explosion louder than 
the first, a puff of blue smoke into which 
I presently ran and then uttered a cry. 
So sharp, so excruciating was the pain, 
that instinctively I raised hand to eyes 
but checked myself, and with tears gush- 
ing over my cheeks, blind and agonised, I 
stumbled away from that hellish vapour. 
Very soon the pain diminished, was gone, 
and looking up through streaming tears 
I beheld the sub. nodding and beaming 
approval. 

"Useful things, eh?" he remarked. "A 
man can't shed tears and shoot straight, 
an' he can't weep and fight well, both at 
the same time — what ? Fritz can be very 
frightful, but we can be more so when we 
want — yes, rather. The Boches have 
learned that there's no monopoly in Fright- 
fulness." 



102 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

In due season we shook hands with our 
cheery sub., and left him beaming after us 
from the threshold of the dingy hut. 

Britain has been called slow, old- 
fashioned, and behind the times, but to-day 
she is awake and at work to such mighty 
purpose that her once small army is now 
numbered by the million, an army second 
to none in equipment or hardy and daunt- 
less manhood. 

From her Home Counties, from her Em- 
pire beyond the Seas, her millions have 
arisen, brothers in arms henceforth, bonded 
together by a spirit of noble self-sacrifice 
— men grimly determined to suffer wounds 
and hardship and death itself, that for 
those who come after them, the world may 
be a better place and humanity may never 
again be called upon to endure all the 
agony and heartbreak of this generation. 



X 

ARRAS 

It was raining, and a chilly wind blew 
as we passed beneath a battered arch into 
the tragic desolation of Arras. 

I have seen villages pounded by gun-lire 
into hideous mounds of dust and rubble, 
their very semblance blasted utterly away ; 
but Arras, shell-torn, scarred, disfigured for 
all time, is a city still — a City of Deso- 
lation. Her streets lie empty and silent, 
her once pleasant squares are a dreary deso- 
lation, her noble buildings, monuments of 
her ancient splendour, are ruined beyond 
repair. Arras is a dead city, whose mourn- 
ful silence is broken only by the intermit- 
tent thunder of the guns. 

Thus, as I paced these deserted streets 
where none moved save myself (for my com- 

103 



104 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

panions had hastened on), as I gazed on 
ruined buildings that echoed mournfully 
to my tread, what wonder that my thoughts 
were gloomy as the day itself ? I paused in 
a street of fair, tall houses, from whose 
broken windows curtains of lace, of plush, 
and tapestry flapped mournfully in the 
chill November wind like rags upon a 
corpse, while from some dim interior came 
the hollow rattle of a door, and, in every 
gust, a swinging shutter groaned despair- 
ingly on rusty hinge. 

And as I stood in this narrow street, 
littered with the brick and masonry of 
desolate homes, and listened to these mourn- 
ful sounds, I wondered vaguely what had 
become of all those for whom this door 
had been wont to open, where now were 
the eyes that had looked down from these 
windows many and many a time — would 
they ever behold again this quiet, narrow 
street, would these scarred walls echo 
again to those same voices and ring with 
joy of life and familiar laughter ? 

And now this desolate city became as it 



ARRAS 105 

were peopled with the souls of these exiles ; 
they flitted ghostlike in the dimness be- 
hind flapping curtains, they peered down 
through closed jalousies — wraiths of the 
men and women and children who had 
lived and loved and played here before 
the curse of the barbarian had driven them 
away. 

And, as if to help this illusion, I saw many 
things that were eloquent of these vanished 
people — glimpses through shattered win- 
dows and beyond demolished house-fronts ; 
here a table set for dinner, with plates 
and tarnished cutlery on a dingy cloth 
that stirred damp and lazily in the wind, 
yonder a grand piano, open and with 
sodden music drooping from its rest; here 
again chairs drawn cosily together. 

Wherever I looked were evidences of 
arrested life, of action suddenly stayed ; 
in one bedroom a trunk open, with a pile 
of articles beside it in the act of being 
packed ; in another, a great bed, its sheets 
and blankets tossed askew by hands wild 
with haste; while in a room lined with 



io6 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

bookcases a deep armchair was drawn up 
to the hearth, with a small table whereon 
stood a decanter and a half-emptied glass, 
and an open book whose damp leaves stirred 
in the wind, now and then, as if touched by 
phantom fingers. Indeed, more than once 
I marvelled to see how, amid the awful 
wreckage of broken floors and tumbled 
ceilings, delicate vases and chinaware had 
miraculously escaped destruction. Upon 
one cracked wall a large mirror reflected 
the ruin of a massive carved sideboard, 
while in another house, hard by, a mag- 
nificent ivory and ebony crucifix yet hung 
above an awful twisted thing that had been 
a brass bedstead. 

Here and there, on either side this nar- 
row street, ugly gaps showed where houses 
had once stood, comfortable homes, now 
only unsightly heaps of rubbish, a con- 
fusion of broken beams and rafters, amid 
which divers familiar objects obtruded them- 
selves, broken chairs and tables, a grand- 
father clock, and a shattered piano whose 
melody was silenced for ever. 



ARRAS 107 

Through all these gloomy relics of a 
vanished people I went slow-footed and 
heedless of direction, until by chance I 
came out into the wide Place and saw be- 
fore me all that remained of the stately 
building which for centuries had been the 
Hotel de Ville, now nothing but a crum- 
bling ruin of noble arch and massive tower ; 
even so, in shattered facade and mullioned 
window one might yet see something of 
that beauty which had made it famous. 

Oblivious of driving rain I stood be- 
thinking me of this ancient city : how in 
the dark ages it had endured the horrors 
of battle and siege, had fronted the cata- 
pults of Rome, heard the fierce shouts 
of barbarian assailants, known the merci- 
less savagery of religious wars, and re- 
mained a city still only for the cultured 
barbarian of to-day to make of it a desola- 
tion. 

Very full of thought I turned away, but, 
as I crossed the desolate square, I was 
aroused by a voice that hailed me, seem- 
ingly from beneath my feet, a voice that 



108 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

echoed eerily in that silent Place. Glancing 
about I beheld a beshawled head that rose 
above the littered pavement, and, as I 
stared, the head, nodded and smiling wanly, 
accosted me again. 

Coming thither I looked into a square 
opening with a flight of steps leading 
down into a subterranean chamber, and 
upon these steps a woman sat knitting 
busily. She enquired if I wished to view 
the catacombs, and pointed where a lamp 
burned above another opening and other 
steps descended lower yet, seemingly into 
the very bowels of the earth. To her I 
explained that my time was limited and 
all I wished to see lay above ground, and 
from her I learned that some few people 
yet remained in ruined Arras, who, even 
as she, lived underground, since every 
day at irregular intervals the enemy fired 
into the town haphazard. Only that very 
morning, she told me, another shell had 
struck the poor Hotel de Ville, and she 
pointed to a new, white scar upon the 
shapeless tower. She also showed me an 



ARRAS 109 

ugly rent upon a certain wall near by, 
made by the shell which had killed her 
husband. Yes, she lived all alone now, 
she told me, waiting for that good day 
when the Boches should be driven beyond 
the Rhine, waiting until the townsfolk 
should come back and Arras wake to life 
again : meantime she knitted. 

Presently I saluted this solitary woman, 
and, turning away, left her amid the deso- 
late ruin of that once busy square, her 
beshawled head bowed above feverishly 
busy fingers, left her as I had found her — 
waiting. 

And now as I traversed those deserted 
streets it seemed that this seemingly dead 
city did but swoon after all, despite its 
many grievous wounds, for here was life 
even as the woman had said ; evidences of 
which I saw here and there, in battered 
stovepipes that had writhed themselves 
snake-like through rusty cellar gratings 
and holes in wall or pavement, miserable 
contrivances at best, whose fumes black- 
ened the walls whereto they clung. Still, 



no GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

nowhere was there sound or sight of folk 
save in one small back street, where, in a 
shop that apparently sold everything, from 
pickles to picture postcards, two British 
soldiers were buying a pair of braces from 
a smiling, haggard-eyed woman, and being 
extremely polite about it in cryptic Anglo- 
French ; and here I foregathered with my 
companions. Our way led us through the 
railway station, a much-battered ruin, its 
clock tower half gone, its platforms cracked 
and splintered, the iron girders of its great, 
domed roof bent and twisted, and with 
never a sheet of glass anywhere. Be- 
tween the rusty tracks grass and weeds 
grew and flourished, and the few waybills 
and excursion placards which still showed 
here and there looked unutterably forlorn. 
In the booking office was a confusion of 
broken desks, stools and overthrown chairs, 
the floor littered with sodden books and 
ledgers, but the racks still held thousands 
of tickets, bearing so many names they 
might have taken any one anywhere 
throughout fair France once, but now, it 



ARRAS m 

seemed, would never take any one any- 
where. 

All at once, through the battered swing 
doors, marched a company of soldiers, the 
tramp of their feet and the lilt of their 
voices filling the place with strange echoes, 
for, being wet and weary and British, 
they sang cheerily. Packs a-swing, rifles 
on shoulder, they tramped through shell- 
torn waiting room and booking hall and 
out again into wind and wet, and I re- 
member the burden of their chanting was : 
"Smile! Smile! Smile!" 

In a little while I stood amid the ruins 
of the great cathedral ; its mighty pillars, 
chipped and scarred, yet rose high in air, 
but its long aisles were choked with rubble 
and fallen masonry, while through the 
gaping rents of its lofty roof the rain fell, 
wetting the shattered heap of particoloured 
marble that had been the high altar once. 
Here and there, half buried in the debris 
at my feet, I saw fragments of memorial 
tablets, a battered corona, the twisted 
remains of a great candelabrum, and over 



ii2 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

and through this mournful ruin a cold 
and rising wind moaned fitfully. Silently 
we clambered back over the mountain of 
debris and hurried on, heedless of the devas- 
tation around, heartsick with the gross 
barbarity of it all. 

They tell me that churches and cathe- 
drals must of necessity be destroyed since 
they generally serve as observation posts. 
But I have seen many ruined churches — 
usually beautified by Time and hallowed 
by tradition — that by reason of site and 
position could never have been so mis- 
used — and then there is the beautiful 
Chateau d'Eau ! 

Evening was falling, and as the shadows 
stole upon this silent city, a gloom unre- 
lieved by any homely twinkle of light, 
these dreadful streets, these stricken homes 
took on an aspect more sinister and for- 
bidding in the half-light. Behind those 
flapping curtains were pits of gloom full of 
unimagined terrors whence came unearthly 
sounds, stealthy rustlings, groans and sighs 
and sobbing voices. If ghosts did flit 



ARRAS 113 

behind those crumbling walls, surely they 
were very sad and woeful ghosts. 

"Damn this rain !" murmured K. gently. 

"And the wind !" said F., pulling up his 
collar. "Listen to it! It's going to play 
the very deuce with these broken roofs and 
things if it blows hard. Going to be a 
beastly night, and a forty-mile drive in 
front of us. Listen to that wind ! Come 
on — let's get away !" 

Very soon, buried in warm rugs, we sped 
across dim squares, past wind-swept ruins, 
under battered arch, and the dismal city 
was behind us, but, for a while, her ghosts 
seemed all about us still. 

As we plunged on through the gather- 
ing dark, past rows of trees that leapt at 
us and were gone, it seemed to me that the 
soul of Arras was typified in that patient, 
solitary woman who sat amid desolate 
ruin — waiting for the great Day ; and 
surely her patience cannot go unrewarded. 
For since science has proved that nothing 
can be utterly destroyed, since I for one 
am convinced that the soul of man through 



ii4 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

death is but translated into a fuller and 
more infinite living, so do I think that one 
day the woes of Arras shall be done away, 
and she shall rise again, a City greater 
perhaps and fairer than she was. 



XI 

THE BATTLEFIELDS 

To all who sit immune, far removed from 
war and all its horrors, to those to whom 
when Death comes, he comes in shape as 
gentle as he may — to all such I dedicate 
these tales of the front. 

How many stories of battlefields have 
been written of late, written to be scanned 
hastily over the breakfast table or com- 
fortably lounged over in an easy-chair, 
stories warranted not to shock or disgust, 
wherein the reader may learn of the glorious 
achievements of our armies, of heroic deeds 
and noble self-sacrifice, so that frequently 
I have heard it said that war, since it pro- 
duces heroes, is a goodly thing, a necessary 
thing. 

Can the average reader know or even 

"5 



u6 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

faintly imagine the other side of the picture ? 
Surely not, for no clean human mind can 
compass all the horror, all the brutal, gro- 
tesque obscenity of a modern battlefield. 
Therefore I propose to write plainly, briefly, 
of that which I saw on my last visit to the 
British front; for since in blood-sodden 
France men are dying even as I pen these 
lines, it seems only just that those of us for 
whom they are giving their lives should at 
least know something of the manner of their 
dying. To this end I visited four great 
battlefields and I would that all such as 
cry up war, its necessity, its inevitability, 
might have gone beside me. Though I 
have sometimes written of war, yet I am 
one that hates war, one to whom the sight 
of suffering and bloodshed causes physical 
pain, yet I forced myself to tread those 
awful fields of death and agony, to look upon 
the ghastly aftermath of modern battle, 
that, if it be possible, I might by my testi- 
mony in some small way help those who 
know as little of war as I did once, to realise 
the horror of it, that loathing it for the 



THE BATTLEFIELDS 117 

hellish thing it is, they may, one and all, 
set their faces against war henceforth, with 
an unshakeable determination that never 
again shall it be permitted to maim, to de- 
stroy and blast out of being the noblest 
works of God. 

What I write here I set down deliber- 
ately, with no idea of phrase-making, of 
literary values or rounded periods ; this is 
and shall be a plain, trite statement of fact. 

And now, one and all, come with me in 
spirit, lend me your mind's eyes, and see 
for yourselves something of what modern 
war really is. 

Behold then a stretch of country — a 
sea of mud far as the eye can reach, a grim 
desolate expanse, its surface ploughed and 
churned by thousands of high-explosive 
shells into ugly holes and tortured heaps like 
muddy waves struck motionless upon this 
muddy sea. The guns are silent, the cheers 
and frenzied shouts, the screams and groans 
have long died away, and no sound is heard 
save the noise of my own going. 

The sun shone palely and a fitful wind 



u8 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

swept across the waste, a noxious wind, 
cold and dank, that chilled me with a 
sudden dread even while the sweat ran from 
me. I walked amid shell craters, some- 
times knee-deep in mud ; I stumbled over 
rifles half buried in the slime, on muddy 
knapsacks, over muddy bags half full of 
rusty bombs, and so upon the body of a 
dead German soldier. With arms wide- 
flung and writhen legs grotesquely twisted 
he lay there beneath my boot, his head 
half buried in the mud, even so I could see 
that the maggots had been busy, though 
the . . . . 1 had killed them where they clung. 
So there he lay, this dead Boche, skull 
gleaming under shrunken scalp, an awful, 
eyeless thing, that seemed to start, to stir 
and shiver as the cold wind stirred his 
muddy clothing. Then nausea and a deadly 
faintness seized me, but I shook it off, and 
shivering, sweating, forced myself to stoop 
and touch that awful thing, and, with the 
touch, horror and faintness passed, and in 
their place I felt a deep and passionate pity, 
1 Deleted by censor. J. F. 



THE BATTLEFIELDS 119 

for all he was a Boche, and with pity in my 
heart I turned and went my way. 

But now, wherever I looked were other 
shapes, that lay in attitudes frightfully 
contorted, grotesque and awful. Here the 
battle had raged desperately. I stood in a 
very charnel-house of dead. From a mound 
of earth upflung by a bursting shell a 
clenched fist, weather-bleached and pallid, 
seemed to threaten me ; from another 
emerged a pair of crossed legs with knees 
up-drawn, very like the legs of one who 
dozes gently on a hot day. Hard by, a 
pair of German knee-boots topped a shell 
crater, and drawing near, I saw the grey- 
green breeches, belt and pouches, and be- 
yond — nothing but unspeakable corrup- 
tion. I started back in horror and stepped 
on something that yielded underfoot — 
glanced down and saw a bloated, discoloured 
face, that, even as I looked, vanished be- 
neath my boot and left a bare and grinning 
skull. 

Once again the faintness seized me, and 
lifting my head I stared round about me 



120 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

and across the desolation of this hellish 
waste. Far in the distance was the road 
where men moved to and fro, busy with 
picks and shovels, and some sang and some 
whistled and never sound more welcome. 
Here and there across these innumerable 
shell holes, solitary figures moved, men, 
these, who walked needfully and with heads 
down-bent. And presently I moved on, 
but now, like these distant figures, I kept 
my gaze upon that awful mud lest again I 
should trample heedlessly on something 
that had once lived and loved and laughed. 
And they lay everywhere, here stark and 
stiff, with no pitiful earth to hide their awful 
corruption — here again, half buried in 
slimy mud ; more than once my nailed 
boot uncovered mouldering tunic or things 
more awful. And as I trod this grisly place 
my pity grew, and with pity a profound 
wonder that the world with its so many 
millions of reasoning minds should permit 
such things to be, until I remembered that 
few, even the most imaginative, could realise 
the true frightfulness of modern men- 



THE BATTLEFIELDS 121 

butchering machinery, and my wonder 
changed to a passionate desire that such 
things should be recorded and known, if 
only in some small measure, wherefore it is 
I write these things. 

I wandered on past shell holes, some deep 
in slime, that held nameless ghastly messes, 
some a-brim with bloody water, until I 
came where three men lay side by side, 
their hands upon their levelled rifles. For 
a moment I had the foolish thought that 
these men were weary and slept, until, 
coming near, I saw that these had died by 
the same shell-burst. Near them lay yet 
another shape, a mangled heap, one muddy 
hand yet grasping muddy rifle, while, be- 
neath the other lay the fragment of a sodden 
letter — probably the last thing those dying 
eyes had looked upon. 

Death in horrible shape was all about me. 
I saw the work wrought by shrapnel, by 
gas, and the mangled red havoc of high 
explosive. I only seemed unreal, like one 
that walked in a nightmare. Here and 
there upon this sea of mud rose the twisted 



m GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

wreckage of aeroplanes, and from where I 
stood I counted five, but as I tramped on 
and on these five grew to nine. One of these 
lying upon my way I turned aside to glance 
at, and stared through a tangle of wires 
into a pallid thing that had been a face once 
comely and youthful; the leather jacket 
had been opened at the neck for the identity 
disc, as I suppose, and glancing lower, I saw 
that this leather jacket was discoloured, 
singed, burnt — and below this, a charred 
and unrecognisable mass. 

Is there a man in the world to-day who, 
beholding such horrors, would not strive 
with all his strength to so order things that 
the hell of war should be made impossible 
henceforth ? Therefore, I have recorded 
in some part what I have seen of war. 

So now, all of you who read, I summon 
you in the name of our common humanity, 
let us be up and doing. Americans — 
Anglo-Saxons, let our common blood be a 
bond of brotherhood between us hence- 
forth, a bond indissoluble. As you have 
now entered the war, as you are now our 



THE BATTLEFIELDS 123 

allies in deed as in spirit, let this alliance 
endure hereafter. Already there is talk of 
some such League, which, in its might and 
unity, shall secure humanity against any 
recurrence of the evils the world now groans 
under. Here is a noble purpose, and I 
conceive it the duty of each one of us, for 
the sake of those who shall come after, that 
we should do something to further that 
which was once looked upon as only an 
Utopian dream — the universal Brother- 
hood of Man. 

" The flowers o' the forest are a' faded away." 

Far and wide they lie, struck down in the 
flush of manhood, full of the joyous, un- 
conquerable spirit of youth. Who knows 
what noble ambitions once were theirs, 
what splendid works they might not have 
wrought ? Now they lie, each poor, shat- 
tered body a mass of loathsome corruption. 
Yet that diviner part, that no bullet may 
slay, no steel rend or mar, has surely entered 
into the fuller living, for Death is but the 
gateway into Life and infinite possibilities. 



124 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

But, upon all who sit immune, upon all 
whom as yet this bitter war has left un- 
touched, is the blood of these that died in 
the cause of humanity, the cause of Free- 
dom for us and the generations to come, this 
blood is upon each one of us — consecrating 
us to the task they have died to achieve, 
and it is our solemn duty to see that the 
wounds they suffered, the deaths they died, 
have not been, and shall not be, in vain. 



XII 

FLYING MEN 

A few short years ago flying was in its 
experimental stage; to-day, though man's 
conquest of the air is yet a dream unrealised, 
it has developed enormously and to an 
amazing degree; to-day, flying is one of 
the chief factors of this world war, both 
on sea and land. Upon the Western front 
alone there are thousands upon thousands 
of aeroplanes — monoplanes and biplanes 
— of hundreds of different makes and de- 
signs, of varying shapes and many sizes. 
I have seen giants armed with batteries of 
swivel guns and others mounting veritable 
cannon. Here are huge bomb-dropping 
machines with a vast wing spread ; solid, 
steady-flying machines for photographic 
work, and the light, swift-climbing, double- 
ts 



126 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

gunned battle-planes, capable of mounting 
two thousand feet a minute and attaining 
a speed of two hundred kilometres. Of 
these last they are building scores a week 
at a certain factory I visited just outside 
Paris, and this factory is but one of many. 
But the men (or rather, youths) who fly 
these aerial marvels — it is of these rather 
than the machines that I would tell, since 
of the machines I can describe little even 
if I would ; but I have watched them hover- 
ing unconcernedly (and quite contemptu- 
ous of the barking attention of "Archie") 
above white shrapnel bursts — fleecy, in- 
nocent-seeming puffs of smoke that go by 
the name of "woolly bears." I have seen 
them turn and hover and swoop, swift and 
graceful as great eagles. I have watched 
master pilots of both armies, English and 
French, perform soul-shaking gyrations high 
in air, feats quite impossible hitherto and 
never attempted until lately. There is now 
a course of aerial gymnastics which every 
flier must pass successfully before he may 
call himself a "chasing" pilot; and, from 



FLYING MEN 127 

what I have observed, it would seem that 
to become a pilot one must be either all 
nerve or possess no nerve at all. 

Conceive a biplane, thousands of feet 
aloft, suddenly flinging its nose up and be- 
ginning to climb vertically as if intending 
to loop the loop ; conceive of its pausing 
suddenly and remaining, for perhaps a full 
minute, poised thus upon its tail — abso- 
lutely perpendicular. Then, the engines 
switched off, conceive of it falling helplessly, 
tail first, reversing suddenly and plunging 
earthwards, spinning giddily round and 
round very like the helpless flutter of a 
falling leaf. Then suddenly, the engine 
roars again, the twisting, fluttering, dead 
thing becomes instinct with life, rights it- 
self majestically on flashing pinions, swoops 
down in swift and headlong course, and 
turning, mounts the wind and soars up and 
up as light, as graceful, as any bird. 

Other nerve-shattering things they do, 
these soaring young demigods of the air, 
feats so marvellous to such earth-bound 
ones as myself — feats indeed so wildly 



128 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

daring it would seem no ordinary human 
could ever hope to attain unto. But in 
and around Paris and at the front, I have 
talked with, dined with, and known many 
of these bird-men, both English, French 
and American, and have generally found 
them very human indeed, often shy, gen- 
erally simple and unaffected, and always 
modest of their achievements and full of 
admiration for seamen and soldiers, and 
heartily glad that their lives are not 
jeopardised aboard ships, or submarines, or 
in muddy trenches ; which sentiment I 
have heard fervently expressed — not once, 
but many times. Surely the mentality of 
the flier is beyond poor ordinary under- 
standing ! 

It was with some such thought in my 
mind that with my friend N., a well-known 
American correspondent, I visited one of 
our flying squadrons at the front. The 
day was dull and cloudy, and N., deep 
versed and experienced in flying and matters 
pertaining thereto, shook doubtful head. 

"We shan't see much to-day," he opined. 



FLYING MEN 129 

"low visibility — plafond only about a 
thousand!" Which cryptic sentence, by 
dint of pertinacious questioning, I found to 
mean that the clouds were about a thousand 
feet from earth and that it was misty. 
"Plafond", by the way, is aeronautic for 
cloud strata. Thus I stood with my gaze 
lifted heavenward until the Intelligence 
Officer joined us with a youthful flight- 
captain, who, having shaken hands, looked 
up also and stroked a small and very young 
moustache. And presently he spoke as 
nearly as I remember on this wise : 

"About twelve hundred ! Rather rotten 
weather for our business — expecting some 
new machines over, too." 

"Has your squadron been out lately?" 
I enquired (I have the gift of enquiry largely 
developed). 

"Rather ! Lost four of our chaps yester- 
day — ' Archie ' got 'em. Rotten bad luck ! " 

"Are they — hurt ?" I asked. , 

"Well, we know two are all right, and 
one we think is, but the other — rather a 
pal of mine — " 



130 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

" Do you often lose fellows ? " 

"Off and on — you see, we're a fighting 
squadron — must take a bit of risk now 
and then — it's the game, y'know !" 

He brought me where stood biplanes and 
monoplanes of all sizes and designs, and 
paused beside a two-seater, gunned fore 
and aft, and with ponderous, wide-flung 
wings. 

"This," he explained, "is an old battle- 
plane, quite a veteran too — jolly old bus 
in its way, but too slow ; it's a 'pusher', you 
see, and ' tractors' are all the go. We're 
having some over to-day — tophole ma- 
chines." Here ensued much technical dis- 
cussion between him and N. as to the 
relative merits of traction and propulsion. 

"Have you had many air duels?" I 
enquired at last, as we wandered on through 
a maze of wheels and wings and propellers. 

"Oh, yes, one or two," he admitted, 
"though nothing very much !" he hastened 
to add. "Some of our chaps are pretty 
hot stuff, though. There's B. now; B.'s 
got nine so far." 



FLYING MEN 131 

"An air fight must be rather terrible?" 
said I. 

"Oh, I don't know!" he demurred. 
"Gets a bit lively sometimes. C, one of 
our chaps, had a near go coming home 
yesterday — attacked by five Boche ma- 
chines, well over their own territory, of 
course. They swooped down on him out 
of a cloud. C. got one right away, but the 
others got him — nearly. They shot his 
gear all to pieces and put his bally gun out 
of commission — bullet clean through the 
tray. Rotten bad luck ! So, being at 
their mercy, C. pretended they'd got him — 
did a turn-over and nose-dived through the 
clouds very nearly on two more Boche 
machines that were waiting for him. So, 
thinking it was all up with him, C. dived 
straight for the nearest, meaning to take a 
Boche down with him, but Hans didn't 
think that was playing the game, and 
promptly hooked it. The other fellow had 
been blazing away and was getting a new 
drum fixed, when he saw C. was on his tail 
making tremendous business with his use- 



132 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

less gun, so Fritz immediately dived away 
out of range, and C. got home with about 
fifty bullet holes in his wings and his gun 
crocked, and — oh, here he is !" 

Flight-Lieutenant C. appeared, rather 
younger than his Captain, a long, slender 
youth, with serious brow and thoughtful 
eyes, whom I forthwith questioned as 
diplomatically as might be. 

"Oh, yes !" he answered, in response to 
my various queries, "it was exciting for a 
minute or so, but I expect the Captain has 
been pulling your leg no end. Yes, they 
smashed my gun. Yes, they hit pretty 
well everything except me and my mascot 
— they didn't get that, by good luck. No. 
I don't think a fellow would mind 'getting 
it' in the ordinary way — a bullet, say. 
But it's the damned petrol catching alight 
and burning one's legs." Here the speaker 
bent to survey his long legs with serious 
eyes. "Burning isn't a very nice finish 
somehow. They generally manage to 
chuck themselves out — when they can. 
Hello — here comes one of our new machines 



FLYING MEN 133 

— engine sounds nice and smooth!" said 
he, cocking an ear. Sure enough, came a 
faint purr that grew to a hum, to an ever- 
loudening drone, and out from the clouds 
an aeroplane appeared, which, wheeling in 
graceful spirals, sank lower and lower, 
touched earth, rose, touched again, and so, 
engine roaring, slid smoothly toward us 
over the grass. Then appeared men in 
blue overalls, who seized the gleaming 
monster in unawed, accustomed hands, 
steadied it, swung it round, and halted it 
within speaking distance. 

Hereupon its leather-clad pilot climbed 
stiffly out, vituperated the weather and lit 
a cigarette. 

"How is she?" enquired the Captain. 

"A lamb! A witch! Absolutely top- 
hole when you get used to her." The top- 
hole lamb and witch was a smallish biplane 
with no great wing spread, but powerfully 
engined, whose points N. explained to me 
as — her speed, her climbing angle, her 
wonderful stability, etc., "while the Captain 
and Lieutenant hastened off to find the 



134 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

Major, who, appearing in due course, proved 
to be slender, merry-eyed and more youth- 
ful-looking than the Lieutenant. Indeed, 
so young seeming was he that upon better 
acquaintance I ventured to enquire his age, 
and he somewhat unwillingly owned to 
twenty-three. 

"But," said he, "I'm afraid we can't show 
you very much, the weather's so perfectly 
rotten for flying." 

"Oh, I don't know," said the Captain, 
glancing towards the witch-lamb, "I 
rather thought I'd like to try this new 
machine — if you don't mind, sir." 

"Same here," murmured the Lieutenant. 

"But you've never flown a Nieuport 
before, have you, eh?" enquired the 
Major. 

"No, sir, but—" 

"Nor you either, C. ?" 

"No, sir, still—" 

"Then I'll try her myself," said the 
Major, regarding the witch-lamb joyous- 
eyed. 

"But," demurred the Captain, "I was 



FLYING MEN 135 

rather under the impression you'd never 
flown one either." 

"I haven't — yet," laughed the Major, 
and hasted away for his coat and helmet. 

"Can you beat that?" exclaimed the 
Lieutenant. 

The Captain sighed and went to aid the 
Major into his leathern armour. Lightly 
and joyously the youthful Major climbed 
into the machine and sat awhile to examine 
and remark upon its unfamiliar features, 
while a sturdy mechanic stood at the pro- 
peller ready to start the engine. 

"By the way," said he, turning to address 
me. "You're staying to luncheon, of 
course ?" 

"I'm afraid we can't," answered our In- 
telligence Officer. 

"Oh, but you must — I've ordered soup ! 
Right-oh!" he called to his mechanician; 
the engine hummed, thundered, and roar- 
ing, cast back upon us a very gale of wind ; 
the witch-lamb moved, slid forward over the 
grass, and gathering speed, lifted six inches, 
a yard, ten yards — and was in flight. 



136 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

"Can you beat that?" exclaimed the 
Captain enthusiastically, "lifted her clean 
away !" 

"I rather fancy he's about as good as 
they're made!" observed the Lieutenant. 
Meanwhile, the witch-lamb soared up and 
up straight as an arrow; up she climbed, 
growing rapidly less until she was a gnat 
against a background of fleecy cloud and the 
roar of the engine had diminished to a whine ; 
up and up until she was a speck — until 
the clouds had swallowed her altogether. 

"Pity it isn't clear!" said the Captain. 
"I rather fancy you'd have seen some real 
flying. By the way, they're going to prac- 
tise at the targets — might interest you. 
Care to see ?" 

The targets were about a yard square and, 
as I watched, an aeroplane rose, wheeling 
high above them. All at once the hum of 
the engine was lost in the sharp, fierce 
rattle of a machine gun; and ever as the 
biplane banked and wheeled the machine 
gun crackled. From every angle and from 
every point of the compass these bullets 



FLYING MEN 137 

were aimed, and examining the targets 
afterwards I was amazed to see how many 
hits had been registered. 

After this they brought me to the work- 
shops where many mechanics were busied ; 
they showed me, among other grim relics, 
C.'s broken machine gun and perforated 
cartridge tray. They told me many stories 
of daring deeds performed by other members 
of the squadron, but when I asked them to 
describe their own experiences, I found them 
diffident and monosyllabic. 

"Hallo!" exclaimed C, as we stepped 
out into the air, "here comes the Major. 
He's in that cloud — know the sound of his 
engine." Sure enough, out from a low- 
lying cloud-bank he came, wheeling in short 
spirals, plunging earthward. 

Down sank the aeroplane, the roaring 
engine fell silent, roared again, and she sped 
towards us, her wheels within a foot or so 
of earth. Finally they touched, the engine 
stopped and the witch-lamb pulled up 
within a few feet of us. Hereupon the 
Major waved a gauntleted hand to us. 



138 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

"Must stop to lunch," he cried, "I've 
ordered soup, you know." 

But this being impossible, we perforce 
said good-by to these warm-hearted, simple- 
souled fighting men, a truly regrettable 
farewell so far as I was concerned. They 
escorted us to the car, and there parted 
from us with many frank expressions of 
regard and stood side by side to watch us 
out of sight. 

"Yesterday there was much aerial ac- 
tivity on our front. 

"Depots were successfully bombed and 
five enemy machines were forced to descend, 
three of them in flames. Four of ours did 
not return." 

I shall never read these oft recurring 
lines in the communiques without thinking 
of those three youthful figures, so full of 
life and the joy of life, who watched us de- 
part that dull and cloudy morning. 

Here is just one other story dealing with 
three seasoned air-fighters, veterans of many 
deadly combats high above the clouds, each 
of whom has more than one victory to his 



FLYING MEN 139 

credit, and whose combined ages total up 
to sixty or thereabouts. We will call them 
X., Y. and Z. Now X. is an American, Y. 
is an Englishman, whose peach-like coun- 
tenance yet bears the newly healed scar of a 
bullet wound, and Z. is an Afrikander. 
Here begins the story : 

Upon a certain day of wind, rain and 
cloud, news came that the Boches were 
massing behind their lines for an attack, 
whereupon X., Y. and Z. were ordered to go 
up and verify this. Gaily enough they 
started despite unfavourable weather con- 
ditions. The clouds were low, very low, 
but they must fly lower, so, at an altitude 
varying from fifteen hundred to a bare 
thousand feet, they crossed the German 
lines, Y. and Z. flying wing and wing be- 
hind X.'s tail. All at once "Archie" spoke, 
a whole battery of anti-aircraft guns filled 
the air with smoke and whistling bullets — 
away went X.'s propeller and his machine 
was hurled upside down ; immediately Y. 
and Z. rose. By marvellous pilotage X. 
managed to right his crippled machine and 



140 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

began, of course, to fall ; promptly Y. and 
Z. descended. It is, I believe, an unwritten 
law in the Air Service never to desert a 
comrade until he is seen to be completely 
"done for" — hence Y. and Z.'s hawk- 
like swoop from the clouds to draw the fire 
of the battery from their stricken com- 
panion. Down they plunged through the 
battery smoke, firing their machine guns 
point-blank as they came ; and so, wheeling 
in long spirals, their guns crackling vi- 
ciously, they mounted again and soared 
cloudward together, but, there among the 
clouds and in comparative safety, Z. de- 
veloped engine trouble. Their ruse had 
served, however, and X. had contrived to 
bring his shattered biplane to earth safely 
behind the British lines. Meanwhile Y. 
and Z. continued on toward their objective, 
but Z.'s engine trouble becoming chronic, 
he fell behind more and more, and finally, 
leaving Y. to carry on alone, was forced to 
turn back. And now it was that, in the 
mists ahead, he beheld another machine 
which, coming swiftly down upon him, 



FLYING MEN 141 

proved to be a German, who, mounting 
above him, promptly opened fire. Z., 
struggling with his baulking engine, had his 
hands pretty full ; moreover his opponent, 
owing to greater speed, could attack him 
from precisely what angle he chose. So 
they wheeled and flew, Z. endeavouring to 
bring his gun to bear, the German keeping 
skilfully out of range, now above him, now 
below, but ever and always behind. Thus 
the Boche flying on Z.'s tail had him at his 
mercy; a bullet ripped his sleeve, another 
smashed his speedometer, yet another broke 
his gauge — slowly and by degrees nearly 
all Z.'s gear is either smashed or carried 
away by bullets. All this time it is to be 
supposed that Z., thus defenceless, is wheel- 
ing and turning as well as his crippled con- 
dition will allow, endeavouring to get a 
shot at his elusive foe ; but (as he told me) 
he felt it was his finish, so he determined if 
possible to ram his opponent and crash 
down with him through the clouds. There- 
fore, waiting until the Boche was aiming 
at him from directly below, he threw his 



14* GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

machine into a sudden dive. Thus for one 
moment Z. had him in range, for a moment 
only, but the range was close and deadly, 
and Z. fired off half his tray as he swooped 
headlong down upon his astonished foe. 
All at once the German waved an arm and 
sagged over sideways, his great battle- 
plane wavering uncertainly, and, as it be- 
gan to fall, Z. avoided the intended collision 
by inches. Down went the German ma- 
chine, down and down, and, watching, Z t 
saw it plunge through the clouds wrapped 
in flame. 

Then Z. turned and made for home as 
fast as his baulking engine would allow. 

These are but two stories among dozens 
I have heard, yet these, I think, will suffice 
to show something of the spirit animating 
these young paladins. The Spirit of Youth 
is surely a godlike spirit, unconquerable, 
care-free, undying. It is a spirit to whom 
fear and defeat are things to smile and 
wonder at, to whom risks and dangers are 
joyous episodes, and Death himself, whose 
face their youthful eyes have so often 



FLYING MEN 143 

looked into, a friend familiar by close ac- 
quaintanceship. 

Upon a time I mentioned some such 
thought to an American aviator, who 
nodded youthful head and answered in 
this manner : 

"The best fellows generally go first, and 
such a lot are gone now that there'll be a 
whole bunch of them waiting to say 'Hello, 
old sport ! ' so — what's it matter, any- 
way ?" 



XIII 

YPRES 

Much has been written concerning 
Ypres, but more, much more, remains to 
be written. Some day, in years to come, 
when the roar of guns has been long for- 
gotten, and Time, that great and benef- 
icent consoler, has dried the eyes that are 
now wet with the bitter tears of bereave- 
ment and comforted the agony of stricken 
hearts, at such a time some one will set 
down the story of Ypres in imperishable 
words ; for round about this ancient town 
lie many of the best and bravest of Brit- 
ain's heroic army. Thick, thick, they lie 
together, Englishman, Scot and Irishman, 
Australian, New Zealander, Canadian and 
Indian, linked close in the comradeship of 
death as they were in life ; but the glory of 
144 



YPRES 145 

their invincible courage, their noble self- 
sacrifice and endurance against overwhelm- 
ing odds shall never fade. Surely, surely 
while English is spoken the story of 
"Wipers" will live on for ever and, through 
the coming years, will be an inspiration 
to those for whom these thousands went, 
cheering and undismayed, to meet and 
conquer Death. 

Ypres, as all the world knows, forms a 
sharp salient in the British line, and is, 
therefore, open to attack on three sides ; 
and on these three sides it has been furiously 
attacked over and over again, so very often 
that the mere repetition would grow weari- 
some. And these attacks were day-long, 
week and sometimes month-long battles, 
but Britain's army stood firm. 

In these bad, dark days, outnumbered 
and out-gunned, they never wavered. 
Raked by flanking fire they met and 
broke the charges of dense-packed foemen 
on their front; rank upon rank and elbow 
to elbow the Germans charged, their bayo- 
nets a sea of flashing steel, their thunderous 



146 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

shouts drowning the roar of guns, and 
rank on rank they reeled back from British 
steel and swinging rifle-butt, and German 
shouts died and were lost in British cheers. 
So, day after day, week after week, month 
after month they endured still ; swept by 
rifle and machine-gun fire, blown up by 
mines, buried alive by mortar bombs, 
their very trenches smitten flat by high ex- 
plosives — yet they endured and held on. 
They died all day and every day, but their 
places were filled by men just as fiercely 
determined. And ever as the countless 
German batteries fell silent, their troops 
in dense grey waves hurled themselves 
upon shattered British trench and dug- 
out, and found there wild men in tunics 
torn and bloody and mud-bespattered, 
who, shouting in fierce joy, leapt to meet 
them bayonet to bayonet. With clubbed 
rifle and darting steel they fought, these 
men of the Empire, heedless of wounds 
and death, smiting and cheering, thrusting 
and shouting, until those long, close-ranked 
columns broke, wavered and melted away. 



YPRES 147 

Then, panting, they cast themselves back 
into wrecked trench and blood-spattered 
shell hole while the enemy's guns roared 
and thundered anew, and waited patiently 
but yearningly for another chance to "really 
fight." So they held this deadly salient. 

Days came and went, whole regiments 
were wiped out, but they held on. The 
noble town behind them crumbled into 
ruin beneath the shrieking avalanche of 
shells, but they held on. German and 
British dead lay thick from British para- 
pet to Boche wire, and over this awful 
litter fresh attacks were launched daily, 
but still they held on, and would have 
held and will hold, until the crack of doom 
if need be — because Britain and the Em- 
pire expect it of them. 

But to-day the dark and evil time is 
passed. To-day for every German shell 
that crashes into the salient, four British 
shells burst along the enemy's position, 
and it was with their thunder in my ears 
that I traversed that historic, battle-torn 
road which leads into Ypres, that road 



148 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

over which so many young and stalwart 
feet have tramped that never more may 
come marching back. And looking along 
this road, lined with scarred and broken 
trees, my friend N. took off his hat and I 
did the like. 

"It's generally pretty lively here," said 
our Intelligence Officer, as I leaned for- 
ward to pass him the matches. "We're 
going to speed up a bit — road's a bit 
bumpy, so hold on." Guns were roaring 
near and far, and in the air above was the 
long, sighing drone of shells as we raced 
forward, bumping and swaying over the 
uneven surface faster and faster, until, 
skidding round a rather awkward corner, 
we saw before us a low-lying, jagged out- 
line of broken walls, shattered towers and 
a tangle of broken roof-beams — all that 
remains of the famous old town of Ypres. 
And over this devastation shells moaned 
distressfully, and all around unseen guns 
barked and roared. So, amidst this pan- 
demonium our car lurched into shattered 
"Wipers", past the dismantled water-tower, 



YPRES 149 

uprooted from its foundations and leaning 
at a more acute angle than will ever the 
celebrated tower of Pisa, past ugly heaps 
of brick and rubble — the ruins of once 
fair buildings, on and on until we pulled 
up suddenly before a huge something, shat- 
tered and formless, a long facade of broken 
arches and columns, great roof gone, mighty 
walls splintered, cracked and rent — all 
that "Kultur" has left of the ancient and 
once beautiful Cloth Hall. 

"Roof's gone since I was here last," 
said the Intelligence Officer, "come this 
way. You'll see it better from over here." 
So we followed him and stood to look upon 
the indescribable ruin. 

"There are no words to describe — that," 
said N. at last, gloomily. 

"No," I answered. "Arras was bad 
enough, but this — !" 

"Arras?" he repeated. "Arras is only 
a ruined town. Ypres is a rubbish dump. 
And its Cloth Hall is — a bad dream." 
And he turned away. Our Intelligence 
Officer led us over mounds of fallen masonry 



150 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

and debris of all sorts, and presently halted 
us amid a ruin of splintered columns, 
groined arch and massive walls, and 
pointed to a heap of rubbish he said was 
the altar. 

"This is the Church St. Jean," he ex- 
plained, "begun, I think, in the eleventh 
or twelfth century and completed some- 
where about 1320 — " 

"And," said N., "finally finished and 
completely done for by 'Kultur' in the 
twentieth century, otherwise I guess it 
would have lasted until the 220th century 
— look at the thickness of the walls." 
1 "And after all these years of civilisation," 
said I. 

"Civilisation," he snorted, turning over 
a fragment of exquisitely carved moulding 
with the toe of his muddy boot, "civilisa- 
tion has done a whole lot, don't forget — 
changed the system of plumbing and taught 
us how to make high explosives and poison 
gas." 

Gloomily enough we wandered on to- 
gether over rubbish piles and mountains of 



YPRES 151 

fallen brickwork, through shattered walls, 
past unlovely stumps of mason-work that 
had been stately tower or belfry once, 
beneath splintered arches that led but 
from one scene of ruin to another, and 
ever our gloom deepened, for it seemed 
that Ypres, the old Ypres, with all its 
monuments of mediaeval splendour, its 
noble traditions of hard-won freedom, its 
beauty and glory, was passed away and 
gone for ever. 

"I don't know how all this affects you," 
said N., his big chin jutted grimly, "but 
I hate it worse than a battlefield. Let's 
get on over to the Major's office." 

We went by silent streets, empty except 
for a few soldierly figures in hard-worn 
khaki, desolate thoroughfares that led be- 
tween piles and huge unsightly mounds of 
fallen masonry and shattered brickwork, 
fallen beams, broken rafters and twisted 
ironwork, across a desolate square shut 
in by the ruin of the great Cloth Hall and 
other once stately buildings, and so to a 
grim, battle-scarred edifice, its roof half 



1 52 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

blown away, its walls cracked and agape 
with ugly holes, its doorway reinforced 
by many sandbags cunningly disposed, 
through which we passed into the dingy 
office of the Town Major. 

As we stood in that gloomy chamber, 
dim-lighted by a solitary oil lamp, floor 
and walls shook and quivered to the con- 
cussion of a shell — not very near, it is 
true, but quite near enough. 

The Major was a big man, with a dreamy 
eye, a gentle voice and a passion for archae- 
ology.' In his company I climbed to the 
top of a high building, whence he pointed 
out, through a convenient shell hole, where 
the old walls had stood long ago, where 
Vauban's star-shaped bastions were, and the 
general conformation of what had been 
present-day Ypres ; but I saw only a 
dusty chaos of shattered arch and tower 
and walls, with huge, unsightly mounds 
of rubble and brick — a rubbish dump in 
very truth. Therefore I turned to the 
quiet- voiced Major and asked him of his 
experiences, whereupon he talked to me 



YPRES i S3 

most Interestingly and very learnedly of 
Roman tile, of mediaeval rubble-work, of 
herringbone and Flemish bond. He as- 
sured me also that {Deo volenti) he pro- 
posed to write a monograph on the various 
epochs of this wonderful old town's history 
as depicted by its various styles of mason- 
work and construction. 

"I could show you a nearly perfect 
aqueduct if you have time," said he. 

"I'm afraid we ought to be starting 
now," said the Intelligence Officer; "over 
eighty miles to do yet, you see, Major." 

"Do you have many casualties still?" 
I enquired. 

"Pretty well," he answered. "The 
mediaeval wall was superimposed upon 
the Roman, you'll understand." 

"And is it," said I as we walked on to- 
gether, "is it always as noisy as this?" 

"Oh, yes — especially when there's a 
'Hate' on." 

"Can you sleep ?" 

"Oh, yes, one gets used to anything, you 
know. Though, strangely enough, I was 



154 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

disturbed last night — two of my juniors 
had to camp over my head, their quarters 
were blown up rather yesterday after- 
noon, and believe me, the young beggars 
talked and chattered so that I couldn't 
get a wink of sleep — had to send and order 
them to shut up." 

"You seem to have been getting it pretty 
hot since I was here last," said the Intel- 
ligence Officer, waving a hand round the 
crumbling ruin about us. 

"Fairly so," nodded the Major. 

"One would wonder the enemy wastes 
any more shells on Ypres," said I, "there's 
nothing left to destroy, is there?" 

"Well, there's us, you know!" said the 
Major gently, "and then the Boche is 
rather a revengeful beggar anyhow — you 
see, he wasted quite a number of army corps 
trying to take Ypres. And he hasn't 
got it yet." 

"Nor ever will," said I. 

The Major smiled and held out his hand. 

"It's a pity you hadn't time to see that 
aqueduct," he sighed. "However, I shall 



YPRES 155 

take some flashlight photos of it — if my 
luck holds. Good-by." So saying, he 
raised a hand to his weather-beaten trench 
cap and strode back into his dim-lit, dingy 
office. 

The one-time glory of Ypres has vanished 
in ruin but thereby she has found a glory 
everlasting. For over the wreck of noble 
edifice and fallen tower is another glory 
that shall never fade but rather grow 
with coming years — an imperishable glory. 
As pilgrims sought it once to tread its 
quaint streets and behold its old-time 
beauty, so in days to come other pilgrims 
will come with reverent feet and with 
eyes that shall see in these shattered ruins 
a monument to the deathless valour of 
that brave host that met death unflinching 
and unafraid for the sake of a great ideal 
and the welfare of unborn generations. 

And thus in her ruin Ypres has found 
the Glory Everlasting. 



XIV 

WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 

The struggle of Democracy and Reason 
against Autocracy and Brute Force, on 
land and in the air, upon the sea and 
under the sea, is reaching its climax. 
With each succeeding month the ignoble 
foe has smirched himself with new atrocities 
which yet in the end bring their own ter- 
rible retribution. 

Three of the bloodiest years in the world's 
history lie behind us ; but these years - of 
agony and self-sacrifice, of heroic achieve- 
ments, of indomitable purpose and un- 
swerving loyalty to an ideal, are surely 
three of the most tremendous in the annals 
of the British Empire. 

I am to tell something of what Britain 
has accomplished during these awful three 
156 



WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 157 

years, of the mighty changes she has 
wrought in this short time, of how, with 
her every thought and effort bent in the 
one direction, she has armed and equipped 
herself and many of her allies ; of the 
armies she has raised, the vast sums she 
has expended and the munitions and arma- 
ments she has amassed. 

To this end it is my privilege to lay be- 
fore the reader certain facts and figures, 
so I propose to set them forth as clearly 
and briefly as may be, leaving them to 
speak for themselves. 

For truly Britain has given and is giving 
much — her men and women, her money, 
her very self; the soul of Britain and her 
Empire is in this conflict, a soul that 
grows but the more steadfast and deter- 
mined as the struggle waxes more deadly 
and grim. Faint hearts and fanatics there 
are, of course, who, regardless of the 
future, would fain make peace with the foe 
unbeaten, a foe lost to all shame and hon- 
ourable dealing, but the heart of the Em- 
pire beats true to the old war-cry of "Free- 



158 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

dom or Death." In proof of which, if 
proof be needed, let us to our figures and 
facts. 

Take first her fighting men : in three 
short years her little army has grown until 
to-day seven million of her sons are under 
arms, and of these (most glorious fact !) 
nearly five million were volunteers. Surely 
since first this world was cursed by 
war, never did such a host march forth 
voluntarily to face its blasting horrors. 
They are fighting on many battle-fronts, 
these citizen-soldiers, in France, Macedonia, 
Mesopotamia, Palestine, Western Egypt 
and German East Africa, and behind them, 
here in the homeland, are the women, 
working as their men fight, with a grim and 
tireless determination. To-day the land 
hums with munition factories and huge 
works whose countless wheels whirr day 
and night, factories that have sprung up 
where the grass grew so lately. The ter- 
rible, yet glorious, days of Mons and the 
retreat, when her little army, out-gunned 
and out-manned, held up the rushing 



WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 159 

might of the German advance so long as 
life and ammunition lasted, that black 
time is past, for now in France and Flanders 
our countless guns crash in ceaseless con- 
cert, so that here in England one may hear 
their ominous muttering all day long and 
through the hush of night ; and hearkening 
to that continuous stammering murmur 
one thanks God for the women of Britain. 

Two years ago, in June, 1915, the Min- 
istry of Munitions was formed under Mr. 
David Lloyd George ; as to its achievements, 
here are figures which shall speak plainer 
than any words. 

In the time of Mons the army was 
equipped and supplied by three Govern- 
ment factories and a very few auxiliary 
firms ; to-day gigantic national factories, 
with miles of railroads to serve them, are 
in full swing, beside which, thousands of 
private factories are controlled by the 
Government. As a result the output of 
explosives in March, 19 17, was over four 
times that of March, 1916, and twenty-eight 
times that of March, 191 5, and so enor- 



160 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

mous has been the production of shells 
that in the first nine weeks of the summer 
offensive of 19 17 the stock decreased by 
only seven per cent, despite the appalling 
quantity used. 

The making of machine guns to-day as 
compared with 19 15 has increased twenty- 
fold, while the supply of small-arm ammuni- 
tion has become so abundant that the neces- 
sity for importation has ceased altogether. 
In one Government factory alone the 
making of rifles has increased ten-fold, and 
the employees at Woolwich Arsenal have 
increased from a little less than eleven 
thousand to nearly seventy-four thousand, 
of whom twenty-five thousand are women. 

Production of steel, before the war, was 
roughly seven million tons ; it is now ten 
million tons and still increasing, so much 
so that it is expected the pre-war output 
will be doubled by the end of 1918; while 
the cost of steel plates here is now less 
than half the cost in the U.S.A. Since 
May, 19 1 7, the output of aeroplanes has 
been quadrupled and is rapidly increasing; 



WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 161 

an enormous programme of construction 
has been laid down and plans drawn up 
for its complete realisation. 

With this vast increase in the production 
of munitions the cost of each article has 
been substantially reduced by systematic 
examination of actual cost, resulting in a 
saving of £43,000,000 over the previous 
year's prices. 

Figures are a dry subject in themselves, 
and yet such figures as these are, I venture 
to think, of interest, among other reasons 
for the difficulty the human brain has to 
appreciate their full meaning. Thus : the 
number of articles handled weekly by the 
Stores Departments is several hundreds 
of thousands above fifty million : or again, 
F read that the munition workers them- 
selves have contributed £40,187,381 to- 
wards various war loans. It is all very 
easy to write, but who can form any just 
idea of such uncountable numbers ? 

And now, writing of the sums of money 
Britain has already expended, I for one am 
immediately lost, out of my depth and 



162 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

plunged ten thousand fathoms deep, for 
now I come upon the following : 

"The total national expenditure for the 
three years to August 4th, 191 7, is ap- 
proximately £5,150,000,000, of which 
£1,250,000,000 is already provided for 
by taxation and £1,171,000,000 has been 
lent to our colonies and allies, which may 
be regarded as an investment." Having 
written which I lay down my pen to think, 
and, giving it up, hasten to record the next 
fact. 

, "The normal pre-war taxation amounted 
to approximately £200,000,000, but for 
the current financial year (1917-1918) a 
revenue of £638,000,000 has been budg- 
eted for, but this is expected to produce 
between £650,000,000 and £700,000,000." 
Now, remembering that the cost of neces- 
saries has risen to an unprecedented extent, 
these figures of the extra taxation and the 
amounts raised by the various war loans 
speak louder and more eloquently than any 
words how manfully Britain has shoul- 
dered her burden and of her determination 



WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 163, 

to see this great struggle through to the 
only possible conclusion — the end, for all 
time, of autocratic government. 

I have before me so many documents 
and so much data bearing on this vast 
subject that I might set down very much 
more ; I might descant on marvels of en- 
terprise and organisation and of almost 
insuperable difficulties overcome. But, lest 
I weary the reader, and since I would have 
these lines read, I will hasten on to the 
last of my facts and figures. 

As regards ships, Britain has already 
placed six hundred vessels at the disposal 
of France and four hundred have been lent 
to Italy, the combined tonnage of these 
thousand ships being estimated at two 
million. 

Then, despite her drafts to Army and 
Navy she has still a million men employed 
in her coal mines and is supplying coal to 
Italy, France and Russia. Moreover, she is 
sending to France one quarter of her total 
production of steel, munitions of all kinds 
to Russia and guns and gunners to Italy. 



164 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

As for her Navy — the German battle 
squadrons lie inactive, while in one single 
month the vessels of the British Navy 
steamed over one million miles ; German 
trading ships have been swept from the 
seas and the U-boat menace is but a menace 
still. Meantime, British shipyards are busy 
night and day; a million tons of craft 
for the Navy alone were launched during 
the first year of the war, and the programme 
of new naval construction for 19 17 runs 
into hundreds of thousands of tons. In 
peace time the building of new merchant 
ships was just under 2,000,000 tons yearly, 
and despite the shortage of labour and 
difficulty of obtaining materials, 1,100,000 
tons will be built by the end of 1917, and 
4,000,000 tons in 191 8. 

The British Mercantile Marine (to whom 
be all honour !) has transported during the 
war, the following : — 

13,000,000 men, 

25,000,000 tons of war material, 
1,000,000 sick and wounded, 



WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 165 

51,000,000 tons of coal and oil fuel, 
2,000,000 horses and mules, 
100,000,000 hundredweights of wheat, 
7,000,000 tons of iron ore, 
and, beyond this, has exported goods to 
the value of £500,000,000. 

Here ends my list of figures and here 
this chapter should end also ; but, before 
I close, I would give, very briefly and in 
plain language, three examples of the 
spirit animating this Empire that to-day 
is greater and more worthy by reason of 
these last three blood-smirched years. 

No. I 

There came from Australia at his own 
expense, one Thomas Harper, an old man 
of seventy-four, to help in a British muni- 
tion factory. He laboured hard, doing 
the work of two men, and more than once 
fainted with fatigue, but refused to go 
home because he "couldn't rest while he 
thought his country needed shells." 



166 GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR 

No. II 

There is a certain small fishing village 
whose men were nearly all employed in 
fishing for mines. But there dawned a 
black day when news came that forty of 
their number had perished together and 
in the same hour. Now surely one would 
think that this little village, plunged in 
grief for the loss of its young manhood, 
had done its duty to the uttermost for 
Britain and their fellows ! But these heroic 
fisher-folk thought otherwise, for im- 
mediately fifty of the remaining seventy- 
five men (all over military age) volunteered 
and sailed away to fill the places of their 
dead sons and brothers. 

No. Ill 

Glancing idly through a local magazine 
some days since, my eye was arrested by this : 

"In proud and loving memory of our 
loved and loving son . . . who fell in 
France . . . with his only brother, 'On 
Higher Service.' There is no death." 



WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE 167 

Thus then I conclude my list of facts 
and figures, a record of achievement such 
as this world has never known before, a 
record to be proud of, because it is the 
outward and visible sign of a people strong, 
virile, abounding in energy, but above all, 
a people clean of soul to whom Right and 
Justice are worth fighting for, suffering 
for, labouring for. It is the sign of a 
people which is willing to endure much 
for its ideals that the world may be a 
better world, wherein those who shall 
come hereafter may reap, in peace and 
contentment, the harvest this generation 
has sowed in sorrow, anguish and great 
travail. 

THE END 




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